Arm Spins-out Cerfe Labs to Advance Development of CeRAM Memory Technology

CAMBRIDGE, England & AUSTIN, Texas-- October 02, 2020 -- 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.

About Cerfe Labs

Cerfe Labs is an electronics materials and device research company jointly founded in Austin, Texas and San Jose, California. Cerfe Labs is focused on bringing new levels of performance to computing systems through fundamental innovation. Our engineers develop physical prototypes and through an IP business model, we will license them to partners for the purposes of optimization of our materials, processes, and devices. Our fabrication and test facilities are located at our partner lab in Colorado Springs, Co. www.cerfelabs.com.

About Arm

Arm technology is at the heart of a computing and data revolution that is transforming the way people live and businesses operate. Our advanced, energy-efficient processor designs have enabled intelligent computing in 180 billion chips and our technologies now securely power products from the sensor to the smartphone and the supercomputer. In combination with our IoT device, connectivity, and data management platform, we are also enabling customers with powerful and actionable business insights that are generating new value from their connected devices and data. Together with 1,000+ technology partners we are at the forefront of designing, securing and managing all areas of compute from the chip to the cloud.