This device is intended for portable consumer and medical devices as well as industrial, automotive and other systems that often use customer-specific data sets to optimise the consumer experience. These non-volatile data sets – including calibration constants, background conditions, user preferences and changing noise environments – are often adjusted by the end system or user a few bytes at a time.
Serial Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory (EEPROM) tends to be selected for these applications as it is able to provide nonvolatility, byte-level control, ease-of-use and low-power consumption.
At 4 Mbit, Microchip’s new EEPROM is set to become 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+ non-volatile 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 re-evaluate their systems and leverage this new technology to optimise design performance.”
The 25CSM04 is no part of Microchip’s extensive non-volatile memory product portfolio that integrates within Microchip’s total system solutions built around its 8-bit, 16-bit, and 32-bit microcontrollers and microprocessors. The company's 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.
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.
