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).
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.
Pricing and Availability
The 25CSM04 family of memory devices is available in three package options starting at $2.32 in 10,000-unit quantities.
For more information, visit the Microchip website.
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