Today, Arm announced the spin-out of Cerfe Labs to develop and license new types of non-volatile memories based on correlated electron materials (CeRAM) and ferroelectric transistors (FeFETs). Arm CeRAM researchers will join Cerfe Labs and assume ownership of the Arm joint development project with Symetrix Corporation.
As part of the spin-out, Arm will transfer its full CeRAM IP portfolio of more than 150 patent families to Cerfe Labs that will be the foundation for a roadmap of related CeRAM technologies. Cerfe Labs’ initial focus will be on producing meaningful prototypes which will be licensed to partners with a goal of accelerating timing of enabling these novel non-volatile materials for systems.
“Over the last five years the Arm Research team has made great progress on advancing CeRAM technology,” said Simon Segars, chief executive officer, Arm. “As Arm strengthens focus on its core semiconductor IP business, we are putting the Cerfe Labs team in a more agile position to be successful in their work to bring this disruptive technology to market.”
The new company is headquartered in Austin, Texas and led by Eric Hennenhoefer and Greg Yeric, two long-time leaders from the Arm Research organization. Hennenhoefer will serve as CEO of Cerfe Labs and Yeric will step into the CTO role. Arm has taken a minority ownership position in Cerfe Labs and Arm Chief Strategy Officer Jason Zajac will join the company’s board of directors.
“CeRAM is the industry’s most promising non-volatile memory with characteristics not found in any other memory technology today,” said Hennenhoefer. “The Cerfe Labs team is well-positioned to accelerate the work started as part of Arm Research and help CeRAM reach its potential as a low-cost, high-performance solution for improving systems that scale from edge AI to HPC.”
Cerfe Labs continues several years of research from Arm and work that was part of DARPA’s ERI FRANC program, where the team identified additional CeRAM materials and investigated uses of its multi-level cell (MLC) capability.
The FeFET program builds on Symetrix’s world-leading lineage in ferroelectric memories and is adding newly discovered material and device integrations.
