CMOx™ Memory Technology
CMOx™ is a next-generation NVM technology based upon a Unity-proprietary switching effect that occurs in certain metal oxide combinations. The switching concept used by Unity in CMOx™ is different from that used in today’s flash technology. The memory effect of CMOx™ technology is based upon the movement of ionic charge carriers. CMOx™ can be utilized to form a passive cross-point multi-layer memory array, as it does not require a transistor per cell. Other memory technologies, such as phase-change memory (PCM) and magneto-resistive random access memory (MRAM), use a transistor per cell and are not amenable to the cross-point multi-layer chip architecture.
Unity Semiconductor’s multi-layer cross-point array utilizes a resistance change element (although it’s not a Resistive RAM (RRAM) memory cell such as is being developed by a few other companies). Rather, in the CMOx™ technology, conduction is uniform across the device instead of being filamentary. The cross-point memory array architecture allows for the densest memory devices of all the next-generation NVM technologies. Further, it enables the physical stacking of multiple layers of memory. Unity Semiconductor’s CMOx™ based designs use 4 physical layers of multi-level cell (MLC) memory, and is the key to increasing the density of its storage-class memory products. A proprietary next-generation nonvolatile memory technology, CMOx™ will yield products with 4x the density and 5-10x the write speed of today’s NAND flash.
Download the Unity Semiconductor paper presented at the 2008 NVMTS conference. The paper discusses the fundamental switching mechanism in conductive metal oxides on which CMOx™ is based.
