Thin film storage flash to feature in next generation mcus
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Freescale will use a 90nm thin film storage flash memory technology in its next generation microcontrollers. The mcus will be targeted for applications ranging from consumer electronics and household appliances to medical devices and smart metering systems.
Thin film storage flash (TFS) combines a split gate architecture with silicon nanocrystals. The split gate architecture is area efficient and supports fast read and write. Silicon nanocrystals, meanwhile, are tolerant to charge loss and can scale readily.
According to Jeff Bock, global marketing manager for Freescale's mcu business, TFS brings performance and flexibility, as well as other benefits over other non volatile memory approaches. "Nanocrystals are fast and disperse charge more quickly than an oxide layer. This means higher performance and less power is needed to turn them on and off.
Freescale is suggesting that flash access times of less than 30ns will be possible with the TFS technology, as well as operation down to 1.71V
Meanwhile, Freescale will be offering FlexMemory – which can be configured either as flash or eeprom – as part of TFS. Applications include program code storage, storage for data tables or for byte write/erase system data.
Bock said: "When used as eeprom, users can trade off the size of the array and the number of accesses. Erase and write times are said to be of the order of 750µs, with the ability to write and erase at the byte level.
Samples of mcus featuring 90nm TFS technology and FlexMemory are expected in Q3 2010, with production planned for early 2011.
