WBT Discussion 2022

[cosors]

Weebit Nano (ASX:WBT) looks like it may be hitting some very big milestones in 2024!​

and

"2024 Outlook with Coby Hanoch of Weebit Nano
by Daniel Nenni on 02-14-2024

Weebit Nano is an Israeli semiconductor company that specializes in the development and commercialization of silicon oxide-based ReRAM (Resistive Random Access Memory) technology. ReRAM is a type of non-volatile memory that holds great promise for future computing and storage applications due to its potential for high density, low power consumption, and fast operation. I have known Coby for many years and it is a pleasure to work with Weebit, absolutely.

Tell us a little bit about yourself and your company
I started off as an engineer and spent my first 17 years on the engineering side, mostly in functional verification roles. I was part of the founding team of Verisity, where I made the switch to the business side, and have been in VP Sales and CEO roles for the past 27 years. I joined Weebit over six years ago, when it was still a small company with only two engineers. I am very proud of the progress we’ve made towards making Weebit a key player in the ReRAM space, with over 30 engineers and many supporting contractors.

Weebit is developing a new Non-Volatile Memory (NVM) technology called ReRAM, which is recognized today as the leading contender to replace flash technology in the future. Our ReRAM has a long list of advantages over flash, in terms of speed, power consumption, endurance, simplicity to manufacture, and most importantly cost to manufacture. Weebit ReRAM can scale down to advanced geometries, and is now fully qualified at 85⁰C and 125⁰C. We’re continuing to qualify our embedded ReRAM at higher endurance and temperature levels, broadening target applications as well as demonstrating the maturity of our technology.

We’ve already licensed our ReRAM technology to DB HiTek and SkyWater, and we are in ongoing evaluations and negotiations with other major foundries and IDMs. We’re also scaling our ReRAM down to more advanced geometries and are thoroughly testing the first 22nm chips embedded with our ReRAM and manufactured by GlobalFoundries.

What was the most exciting high point of 2023 for your company?
We achieved several major milestones in 2023. Qualifying our ReRAM at 125⁰C – the temperature required for automotive grade-1 and some industrial applications – was important since it demonstrates the suitability of Weebit ReRAM for high-temperature applications with lifespans of at least a decade. But perhaps the biggest highlight was the progress we made with major foundries/IDMs, culminating in the recent licensing agreement with DB HiTek, one of the top-10 foundries in the world. This is setting the stage for additional agreements in 2024.

What was the biggest challenge your company faced in 2023?
While it may sound counterintuitive, one of our biggest challenges in 2023 was our rapid growth. Over the past two years, the market began to realize that ReRAM is no longer a “future memory” – it is now a reality. In parallel, we qualified the technology and started signing licensing agreements. This presented challenges in needing to scale our workforce to meet prospect/customer expectations, including running multiple concurrent projects and evaluations at different process nodes and wafer sizes.

How is your company’s work addressing this biggest challenge?
We’ve been scaling the company in multiple ways, not just adding more people but also aligning teams together, forming new workgroups, and collecting/analyzing data for effective IP reuse and product alignment. One of the great things about Weebit is that we are strong across all the key disciplines needed to create a leading memory company. We have world-class talent across the four key ReRAM disciplines – device physics, process and materials, analog and digital design and algorithms, and test and characterization. I believe we have broader expertise than any other standalone ReRAM provider. This is all supported by our extremely experienced Board of Directors, including Dadi Perlmutter who led development of the Pentium while at Intel, Atiq Raza who helped push AMD to its leading position, and Yoav Nissan-Cohen who co-founded Tower Semiconductor, among others.

What do you think the biggest growth area for 2024 will be, and why?
I believe 2024 will be the year of ReRAM. There is a huge vacuum in the market which needs to be filled. Now that people know ReRAM is available and realize its great potential, practically all the world’s foundries and IDMs are looking for a ReRAM solution.

At Weebit, we are providing a licensable embedded ReRAM solution that foundries can easily add to their IP portfolios and semiconductor companies can easily embed in their SoCs. We’re seeing a great deal of interest in areas such as power management ICs, wearable medical devices, aerospace and defense, edge AI and automotive solutions.

How is your company’s work addressing this growth?
To address the growing demand for ReRAM across a broad range of applications, we are setting up a strong sales organization which will work with these foundries/IDMs and expand to others. We are already engaged in evaluations, negotiations and other activities with the majority of the top foundries and IDMs. At Weebit, the quality of our team and our singular focus on ReRAM ensures we are well placed to become the leader in the burgeoning ReRAM domain.

What conferences did you attend in 2023 and how was the traffic?
In 2023 we attended shows including Embedded World in Germany, the Design Automation Conference (DAC) in San Francisco and CSIA – ICCAD in China. These conferences were successful for us, generated many good leads, and enabled discussions with partners. While floor traffic was not always strong, the fact that we arranged many meetings in advance, along with the strong interest we are seeing in ReRAM, created a situation where the booth was full at almost all times.

Will you attend conferences in 2024? Same or more?
In 2024, we will once again attend Embedded World in Germany, and we will extend our activities to include exhibiting at the first Embedded World North America, which will be held this autumn in Austin. The interest we are seeing in ReRAM is worldwide, and the United States is no exception, so we look forward to meeting with many potential customers and partners at that show. Some of our team also attended CES in Las Vegas, and we plan to expand this activity next year.

Additional questions or final comments?
Thank you, Dan, for continuing to share industry developments through SemiWiki. It’s good to catch up with you.

Also Read:​

ReRAM Integration in BCD Process Revolutionizes Power Management Semiconductor Design

A preview of Weebit Nano at DAC – with commentary from ChatGPT

How an Embedded Non-Volatile Memory Can Be a Differentiator"

2024 Outlook with Coby Hanoch of Weebit Nano - Semiwiki

Weebit Nano is an Israeli semiconductor company that specializes in the development and commercialization of silicon oxide-based ReRAM (Resistive Random Access Memory) technology. ReRAM is a type of non-volatile memory that holds great promise for future computing and storage applications due to...

semiwiki.com

 

[Slymeat]

100k cycles at 150 °C—quite impressive.

 

[Slymeat]

 

[wasMADX]

There are 2 ASX announcements today titled "Becoming a substantial holder". The biggest one with JP Morgan shows multiple transactions.

Can anyone explain what it is all about, please?

 

[DaBenjamins]

There are 2 ASX announcements today titled "Becoming a substantial holder". The biggest one with JP Morgan shows multiple transactions.

Can anyone explain what it is all about, please?

Haven't had a look at the announcement Madx but could be the new Israeli Institution accumulating from a recent LinkedIn post by Coby.

 

[Slymeat]

There’s a lot to like about the valuation in this report. Bring it on I say.

It will be nice to be back up in the $9 range someday.

Weebit Nano (ASX:WBT, A$2.30): Collaboration with Efabless

 

[wasMADX]

I got an excellent screed on WBT via the Automic Registry today. It's 38 pages long (gasp). Sorry I can't post it here as I understand the publisher says I can't.

 

[cosors]

 

[cosors]

PQC+RRAM

The content is probably a bit ~abstract for most of us, but it is certainly an interesting and very important use case. At the end of the interview, it is about PUF.
Mabe we mere mortals will all use it later without knowing what it's all about.

"Post-Quantum Cryptography: Moving Forward​

November 29, 2024
Robert Huntley

To discover some of the challenges ahead, EE Times Europe spoke with Shahram Mossayebi, CEO of Crypto Quantique (London), a quantum-driven cybersecurity company addressing the growing challenges of end-to-end IoT security.

Now that the post-quantum cryptographic (PQC) standards have been published, it’s easy to be lulled into thinking that implementing them is relatively straightforward. To discover some of the challenges ahead, EE Times Europe spoke with Shahram Mossayebi, CEO of Crypto Quantique (London), a quantum-driven cybersecurity company addressing the growing challenges of end-to-end IoT security.
EE TIMES EUROPE: PQC news has featured highly these past years, but with the recent publication of the final standards, interest appears to have waned. Are security experts quietly pushing ahead with PQC implementations, or are serious challenges ahead?

Crypto Quantique’s Shahram Mossayebi

Shahram Mossayebi: It will be a massive, monumental task on all industry fronts. From a semiconductor point of view, there needs to be all this new implementation, which has its own challenges from the side-channel attack [SCA] point of view, efficiency and memory management. Then you have to update all these pieces of hardware, which have a hardware security module [HSM]. I would give it five years. While new MCUs are coming out now with PQC capabilities inside them, there’s another massive challenge on the enterprise side, which not only relies on hardware to support the new algorithms for complete end-to-end security but also where there is a lot of software running old cryptographic algorithms that need to be found, managed and updated. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency has developed recommendations and tools for planning and implementing PQC algorithms, either for an interim move to a hybrid [classical and PQC] regime or for a fully PQC deployment.
EE TIMES EUROPE: Side-channel attacks are becoming an increasingly important aspect of any cybersecurity implementation. Adversaries are becoming even more devious and creative in mounting SCA vectors due to the widespread availability of low-cost online tools. Was resistance to SCA part of the PQC specification testing and selection process?
Mossayebi: Yes, side-channel attacks will be one of the sticking points in getting PQC algorithms running, but obviously, we’ve learned a lot from the past. While evaluating the PQC algorithm candidates, the U.S. National Institute of Standards and Technology [NIST] seriously considered SCA, with some algorithms being eliminated during the early stages. That was because we already knew the type of math the algorithms would use and that it would be impossible or tough to protect them against side-channel attacks. If you look within the FIPS 203, FIPS 204 and FIPS 205 standards, there is a side-channel attack section for some of them. NIST is already pointing out the types of side-channel attacks you must know when implementing these algorithms. There has been some excellent work already done on this topic, but in reality, you are implementing these standards on a piece of silicon with new code. It will take some time for people to figure out the safest design approach based on their studies and research.
EE TIMES EUROPE: Is implementing PQC algorithms purely a software challenge for enterprise systems compared with the difficulties with embedded systems?
Mossayebi: Most people might think that with enterprise systems, it’s just about the software, but in reality, it’s the software running on a piece of hardware, and when it comes to cryptography, there’s always the question of whether you have a safe environment to run your cryptography. First, do you have an HSM that supports PQC? Some HSMs may be easier to upgrade to support PQC than others. Google and some other cloud infrastructure providers have already started running TLS communications using PQC. Clearly, they have built that kind of HSM infrastructure, everything required behind the scenes and upgraded from classical cryptography. However, even when upgrading the software, from an enterprise infrastructure point of view, the public key infrastructure can be massive in such organizations, with many different certificates used for many things.
EE TIMES EUROPE: What are the challenges within the embedded domain, particularly for resource-constrained IoT devices like asset trackers?
Mossayebi: One aspect of PQC is how resource-intensive it is compared with the existing classical cryptographic systems in use today, not only from the compute perspective but also from the storage and bandwidth it requires. With the current cryptographic ecosystem, you only need bytes of memory compared with PQC, where the memory requirement jumps to hundreds of bytes or kilobytes, so suddenly it is a massive explosion. One of the good things happening in the industry and academia is exploring how you can integrate and implement PQC with a lower footprint for the IoT, whether it is a hybrid model or more optimized ways of implementing the algorithms. A trend is taking shape regarding how to address the issues of implementing PQC on resource-constrained devices.

The recently published PQC algorithms provide higher security margins but require greater memory allocation, processing power and bandwidth.

EE TIMES EUROPE: How is Crypto Quantique addressing the PQC challenge?

Mossayebi: We recognize that flash memory is expensive and hard to manage, especially as you go to lower process nodes. Using secure memory to store the secret keys required by the PQC algorithms could be very expensive and cumbersome, and this is one of the areas that our physical unclonable functions [PUFs] can address. We are working with some industry partners and universities to build instructions and infrastructure on the chips so that you can use a PUF, such as our PUF QD, to generate PQC keys with low latency and at high speed on the fly when you need them. In this way, you don’t need to store a large number of secret keys inside flash memory, and you can regenerate them anytime you need the secret key for the PQC algorithms. We are solving the memory issue associated with implementing PQC algorithms."

https://www.eetimes.eu/post-quantum-cryptography-moving-forward/

"The demand for electronic device authentication is growing sky-high due to the widespread use of IoT devices. An effective method for hardware-level device authentication is CMOS-based Physically Unclonable Function (PUF). Since CMOS technology is hitting the power and memory wall, emerging memory devices are becoming quite popular for designing lightweight novel PUFs. One of the intriguing PUF design alternatives is resistive random-access memory (ReRAM), which has attracted substantial research interest due to its inherent stochasticity, CMOS process compatibility, high-density integration, and non-volatility. Researchers have been working on ReRAM-based PUF with various design structures that use derivatives from device to circuit-level advancements, opening up a new pathway for developing novel ReRAM-based PUF design solutions every day."

https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/document/10130179

 

[cosors]

Congratulations!

"Weebit Nano Turns 10:
Only the Persistent Survive​

Coby Hanoch​

It’s January 7, 2025, and today, Weebit Nano is 10 years old. What an amazing milestone!

When the company began in 2015, we had ideas based on the work of Prof. James Tour from Rice University. The ideas were around resistance as the basis of memory, and while still in the research phase, Weebit’s founders knew the concepts were solid, and also knew that very soon the industry would need a replacement for flash memory.

That year the company hired its first engineer, Amir Regev, who today is Weebit’s VP Quality & Reliability. One of Amir’s first projects was to look for an excellent R&D partner, and after much due diligence, the company engaged with CEA-Leti, the French research organization who continues as our strategic R&D partner today. It was the beginning of an amazing partnership.

In 2016, Weebit hired its first PhD in France, Giuseppe Piccolboni, and in 2017, the company established its French subsidiary.

Weebit was fortunate in the early days to catch the attention of Dadi Perlmutter, who had retired from his most recent position at Intel as EVP, Chief Product Officer and GM of the Intel Architecture Group, overseeing all the company’s products. He agreed to become the Chairman of the Weebit Board of Directors.

Getting funding was a big challenge in the days when VCs were focused on cyber, automotive and the initial phases of AI. We were lucky that at the same time, the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) was looking to expand its roster of listed companies beyond the many focused on mining, energy and finance to include more technology companies. As part of this effort, the ASX sent several delegations to Israel to investigate the possibilities, and numerous Israeli technology companies including Weebit decided to list on the ASX.

Weebit’s former CEO, Yossi Keret, worked with Dadi and Ashley Krongold, one of our very first investors, to list on the ASX through a reverse takeover in August 2016. Yossi focused on setting up the company’s initial infrastructure in Israel, France and Australia, including hiring our CFO, Alla Felder. Shortly thereafter, Yossi had to step down for personal reasons and recommended me to replace him. (Thank you for that, Yossi!)

I joined the company in October 2017, with only two engineers on board and a technology that was still in university-level R&D. Dadi brought on board Atiq Raza, a legend in the semiconductor space (previously President and COO of AMD; Chairman and CEO of RMI – just a bit of his deep experience), as well as Yoav Nissan-Cohen, who did a PhD in Device Physics under Prof. Dov Frohman, the inventor of the first digital non-volatile memory (NVM). Yoav was also a founder of Tower Semiconductor, one of the top 10 foundries. Yoav became an executive director on the Weebit Board, helping guide technology development in the early days.

2018 was a year of transition for Weebit. On the technical side we delivered a 1Mb array and we started hiring a strong team. In 2019 we overcame a tough financial situation and started pushing for partnerships and looking for initial customers. At the time we had more of a focus on the very large semiconductor market in China, but when COVID hit, together with a growing trade war, we decided to shift our focus to the rest of the world.

Despite all odds, 2020 became a major year of growth. We had a good capital raise in June, followed by another in November. In October of that year, we completed the ReRAM (RRAM) technology stabilization process. At the same time, we hired three well-known experts to set up our executive staff: Ishai Naveh as CTO, leading our device and process work; Ilan Sever as VP R&D, leading analog and digital design efforts; and Eran Briman as VP Marketing and Business Development. In 2022 we brought on board Gabriel Molas, with close to 20 years of ReRAM research experience at Leti, to be our Chief Scientist.

Technical progress continued with the qualification of our technology at Leti (on STMicro wafers) at 85⁰C and then 125⁰C. We closed our first licensing agreement with SkyWater, and showed we know how to transfer the recipe and achieve qualification there too. This led to a licensing agreement with DB HiTek, where we are now focused on moving towards full qualification.

In 2023 and 2024 we completed the executive team, adding Gideon Intrater as an Advisor to the CEO, and Issachar Ohana as Chief Revenue Officer.

And now, just before our 10th anniversary, we closed a licensing agreement with one of the leading integrated device manufacturers (IDMs), onsemi, starting 2025 with a bang!

10 years ago, the world knew it wanted a new NVM, but it was not clear what that would look like. There were MRAM, FeRAM, PCM, Optane, 3D-Xpoint, ReRAM and others. There were other companies developing ReRAM, already trying to commercialize years before Weebit.

However, as time passed, it became clear that many of these technologies were too expensive to manufacture or had other side effects (like sensitivity to magnetic fields), and today it is clear that the leading technology emerging from the pack is ReRAM. Other ReRAM developers tried using non-standard materials and tools to implement ReRAM, and many failed, leaving Weebit Nano as one of the only three qualified ReRAM technologies to-date, and the only independent supplier of qualified ReRAM in the market.

Over the past 10 years as we have pushed Weebit ReRAM from research towards production, we have had many ups and downs, but one of the key traits shared by our team members is their persistence. Because of this, we persist in our goal to deliver excellent, cost-effective technology towards becoming the #1 embedded NVM vendor. Interestingly, this persistence is reflected in our technology itself – ReRAM as a non-volatile memory is a persistent memory that retains its data even when power is turned off.

I am thankful for the opportunity to lead Weebit, and for the amazing Board and team we have. And I am very thankful to our loyal shareholders, many of whom have been with us almost from the start.

What a journey it has been! And it is only the beginning, as we look towards the next 10 years, which will be years of commercialization and expansion, with the vision of becoming the #1 supplier of embedded NVM and also developing a discrete solution.


We know that Weebit has the recipe for success. Our robust and fully qualified technology is continuously improving under the hands of a strong R&D team, including 13 PhDs and experts in all four pillars of ReRAM: Device, Process, Analog design and Digital design, all under the leadership of a very experienced and focused management team. With our solid team, robust technology, several commercial deals completed, and having recently raised A$50 million, we are well positioned to make our vision a reality.


2025 is shaping up to be a very exciting year, and a great start for the next 10 years!"

Weebit Nano Turns 10:Only the Persistent Survive | Weebit | A Quantum Leap In Data Storage

It’s January 7, 2025, and today, Weebit Nano is 10 years old. What an amazing milestone! When the company began in 2015, we had ideas based on the work of Prof. James Tour from Rice University. The ideas were around resistance as the basis of memory, and while still in the research phase...

www.weebit-nano.com