Kilopass Technology Expands Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Offering To Address Mobile, Consumer, and Computing Markets

– Kilopass Technology, a leading provider of semiconductor non-volatile memory (NVM) intellectual property (IP), announced today BriteXPM, a new product family of one-time programmable (OTP) embedded non-volatile memory (NVM) for mobile, consumer and computing applications requiring faster random access time. As much as 40% improvement in random access time is achieved from the industrial and automotive product lines. Initial BriteXPM for select foundry processes are already available off-the-shelf. More will be ready by Q3, ’09.

Historically, Kilopass’ traditional XPM products are qualified with an accelerated voltage and temperature equivalent to more than 10 years of operating life under harsh environment. With additional guard banding, the certified XPM has a relatively slow performance of 70ns access time, but can often out-live the silicon it is embedded in. While reassuring in military, industrial, or automotive applications, Kilopass has decided that another optimization is appropriate for consumer, computing, and mobile applications where performance is more important, thus the BriteXPM product family.

“I am very excited to have finally productized the BriteXPM product line”, said Kilopass VP of R&D, Pearl Cheng. “It is something our customers have asked us about, and we have worked hard to establish the technical validation to offer the higher performance.”

Indeed, Kilopass has long held quality & reliability as the most critical factor to success, and thus its dedication to programs such as TSMC’s IP9000 certification. The BriteXPM has to be just as reliable to these customers. After eight years of silicon verification, Kilopass has gained enough field data to correlate actual performance to statistical & foundry models. With a setting modification to the database, as well as countless verification to optimize the guard band, Kilopass has been able to reduce the access time to as much as 40ns.

“BriteXPM offers an optimized solution for consumer electronics, combined faster random access time with cost effective, secure storage, and programming flexibility in the factory or the field, while still remaining true to the high quality and reliability,” said Kilopass head of marketing, Linh Hong. “With improved performance comes reduced shadow memories, and thus reduced product cost.”

BriteXPM Overview

The BriteXPM family uses the same patented anti-fuse bit cell and array architecture as the highly successful XPM products. In fact, much of the peripheral design is also the same. The critical factor here is enough historical data, accurate models, continuous characterization and experimentation to gain the confidence to create a different specification point.

“Voltage margin and performance are directly related in Kilopass’ unique OTP memory,” said Kilopass CTO, Harry Luan. “With our in-house test systems and a highly skilled product engineering team, we are able to gain the valuable data to validate the performance claim. In fact, we’ve gained enough confidence to see our roadmap to even faster XPM products.”

BriteXPM Pricing & Availability

BriteXPM is available from 130nm to 40nm at foundries including Chartered, Dongbu, SMIC, and TSMC. However, unlike the traditional XPM products, actual availability & actual access time depend on Kilopass’ characterization data and foundry model. There is no price difference between BriteXPM and traditional XPM.

About Kilopass

Kilopass Technology, Inc., a fast-growing supplier of embedded NVM intellectual property, leverages standard logic CMOS processes to deliver one-time programmable (OTP) structures based on its extra-permanent memory (XPM) technology. The memory can be used for the storage of firmware, security codes, calibration data and other application-critical information. Kilopass is funded by BlueRun Ventures, iGlobe Partners, Pitango Venture Capital, and US Venture Partners. The company is headquartered in Santa Clara, CA. For more information, please visit www.kilopass.com or email info@kilopass.com.