OKI Semiconductor is the latest firm to sample ferroelectric RAM (FRAM), the non-volatile memory that uses a ferroelectric film as a capacitor for data storage.
It is claimed to be much lower power and with faster write speed than EEPROM and flash.
According to Oki, which is part of the Rohm Group, FRAM has power consumption one 400th of flash, a write speed similar to DRAM and a significant higher number of writing cycles (1012 times).
Interest in FRAM has been growing after some years in gestation. The likes of Texas Instruments and Fujitsu have recently announced microcontrollers with embedded FRAM.
A 16-bit microcontroller with embedded FRAM which uses 250 times less power than flash or EPROM-based microcontrollers was put on the market by Texas Instruments earlier this month.
Called the MSP430FR57xx FRAM microcontroller series, it writes up to 100x times faster than flash and has a trillion write/erase cycles compared to the 10,000 cycles of flash. It is made on a 0.13 micron process and comes in a 4mm x 4mm package.
Last year Fujitsu Semiconductor announced an 8-bit microcontroller with embedded FRAM.
FRAM is a non-volatile memory with a faster write speed than flash.
“The result is that the MCU does not need to wait for the write operation to complete,” said Fujitsu.
Also with a reduced internal write voltage, the FRAM can be erased and re-written 100,000 times more compared to its predecessor.
Oki is offering first samples of different devices with serial (I2C or SPI) or parallel interface are already available to evaluate the new parts.
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