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Nonvolatile memory gains automotive qualification

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Oct 28, 2004

Ramtron's FM25640 64Kbit serial SPI FRAM is now qualified under the Automotive Electronic Council's Stress Test Qualification for Integrated Circuits (AEC Q100).

Ramtron's FM25640 64Kbit serial SPI FRAM is now qualified under the Automotive Electronic Council's Stress Test Qualification for Integrated Circuits (AEC Q100).

Ramtron currently supplies FRAM products to the automotive industry for a variety of applications including smart airbag, instrumentation and entertainment systems.

Achieving AEC Q100 qualification is expected to allow FRAM products to gain wider acceptance in mainstream automotive system applications and reduce design-in cycles for certain automotive systems.

Ramtron plans to continue qualifying selected FRAM products under the AEC Q100 standard.

"Qualifying under AEC Q100 demonstrates that Ramtron is committed to meeting the demanding requirements of automotive customers", said Ramtron Vice President Mike Alwais.

"Today's automotive systems are increasingly demanding, and no other nonvolatile memory solution can match the write speed and high endurance of FRAM products".

FRAM's fast read/write and high-endurance features solve a wide variety of automotive system design challenges, such as distinctive resume-play functions in automotive entertainment gear.

FRAM stores scene changes and unique user data upon power-down, enabling users to continue where they left off when the unit is powered back up.

FRAM is also revolutionising data collection in a new breed of smart airbag systems, allowing more data to be collected more frequently, thereby enhancing system intelligence and deployment effectiveness.

FRAM technology provides the first true nonvolatile RAM.

The FM25640 is a 64Kbit SPI interface FRAM memory product that operates as a RAM while providing non-volatile data storage.

Read and write access times are equal, with the technology providing over one-trillion read/write cycles.

With the FM25640, there are a far greater number of write cycles without wear-out, compared with similar EEPROMs, and much faster writes.

As a result, customers are able to collect and store data and configurations more often with lower total cost and system overhead.