Microchip Introduces Its Highest-Density EEPROM with 4 Mbit Serial EEPROM Debut
Portable consumer and medical devices including fitness trackers, hearing aids and glucose monitors as well as industrial, automotive and other systems often use customer-specific data sets to optimize the consumer experience. These nonvolatile data sets – including calibration constants, background conditions, user preferences and changing noise environments – often are adjusted by the end system or user a few bytes at a time. Serial Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM) is the memory of choice for these applications providing nonvolatility, byte-level control, ease-of-use and low-power consumption. Microchip Technology Inc.announced its new, highest-density EEPROM – the 25CSM04.
At 4 Mbit, Microchip’s new EEPROM becomes the largest EEPROM available to developers, doubling the 2 Mbit density designers previously were limited to. Until now developers have used lower-cost NOR Flash integrated circuits (ICs) for any 2 Mbit+ nonvolatile data set application. Because EEPROM offers performance advantages over NOR Flash, Microchip has responded to customer requests by introducing a larger 4 Mbit EEPROM. EEPROM advantages include a lower standby current (2 µA vs. 15 µA); the ability to perform single-byte, multi-byte, and full-page writes; shorter sector erase/rewrite times (5ms vs.300ms); and more erase/rewrite cycles (1M vs 100K).
“Pushing the top end of what is possible with serial EEPROM supports product innovation,” said Randy Drwinga, vice president of Microchip’s memory products division. “Designers can now reevaluate their systems and leverage this new technology to optimize design performance.”
The 25CSM04 becomes part of Microchip’s extensive nonvolatile memory product portfolio that integrates within Microchip’s total system solutions built around its 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit microcontrollers and microprocessors. Microchip’s extensive memory product family includes serial EEPROMs, NOR Flash, SRAM, and EERAM in all standard serial buses and all standard densities from 128-bit to 64 Mbit.
As a technology innovator in serial EEPROM for more than 30 years, Microchip delivers approximately one billion EEPROM devices annually.
Development Tools
Microchip’s 4 Mbit serial EEPROM devices are supported by the MPLAB Starter Kit for Serial Memory Products. The kit includes a serial memory interface board, serial EEPROM starter pack, USB cable, CD containing the MPLAB X Integrated Development Environment (IDE), Total Endurance™ software model and a serial EEPROM interface tool.
