Freescale Semiconductor has announced its 90nm thin-film storage (TFS) flash memory technology for its next-generation microcontroller (MCU) platforms. The advanced technology is expected to be deployed in Freescale MCUs targeted for applications ranging from consumer electronics and household appliances to medical devices and smart metering systems.
Freescale also introduced FlexMemory, a key feature of TFS flash. FlexMemory provides simple, cost-effective, on-chip, enhanced electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) with the added benefits of industry leading flexibility, performance and endurance. FlexMemory can be configured by the user as additional flash memory or as a combination of EEPROM and flash memory.
“Our goal is to provide developers with complete plug-and-play solutions designed to alleviate cost and time-to-market concerns while helping them differentiate their end products,” said Reza Kazerounian, Senior Vice President and General Manager of Freescale’s Microcontroller Solutions Group. “The technology developments we’re announcing today will help address these issues and demonstrate our drive to remain at the forefront of embedded MCU innovation.”
Freescale's TFS technologies enable bit-level reliability through revolutionary silicon nanocrystal technology; provide flash access times of <30 nanoseconds; and feature excellent area efficiency, enabling a rich level of memory and peripheral integration across flash densities.
The FlexMemory technology, meanwhile, adds EEPROM capability as a key feature to Freescale’s 90nm thin film storage flash, and offers several enhancements over traditional EEPROM, including:
- customer-selected, application-optimized trade-off of quantity of available EEPROM (up to 16kB) and endurance (greater than one million cycles over full temperature and voltage range); and
- only 1.5ms are required for erase + write, which is five times faster than traditional EEPROM solutions.
The versatility of Freescale’s FlexMemory enables it to be used for a variety of purposes including additional application program code storage, storage for data tables or for byte write/erase system data. In all modes, FlexMemory can be accessed simultaneously with the main program memory.
Freescale's 90nm TFS flash with FlexMemory
Freescale
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