SAN JOSE, Calif.—Nonvolatile ferroelectric random access memory (FRAM) vendor Ramtron International Corp. launched a low-energy FRAM chip Tuesday (March 27) at the
DESIGN West event here.
The FM25e64 expands Ramtron's capability to improve energy efficiency, access speed and security in customers' products, according to
Ramtron (Colorado Springs, Colo.).
Ramtron said it woulld also featured its FM72016 wireless memory and FM31T378 processor companion products at the DESIGN West conference. All of the products the company is demonstrating at DESIGN West benefit metering, point-of-sale and other data-intensive logging applications with their ability to lower energy consumption, increase data integrity and decrease product deployment and associated maintenance costs, according to Ramtron.
Ramtron claims its memory technology inherently provides high endurance, fast single-cycle and symmetrical read/write speeds, low power consumption and gamma radiation tolerance and electromagnetic immunity. The FM25e64 achieves levels of power consumption that are not possible with older nonvolatile memory technologies, such as electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM), according to Ramtron. The FM25e64 natively operates on 1.5- or 1.8-volt power rails, offers low 20-microamps active current operation, and only requires about 20-microseconds to start up, write data and shut down the memory, according to the company.
"Energy consumption cannot be measured in volts and amperes alone," said Scott Emley, Ramtron's vice president of worldwide marketing, in a statement. "The speed and frequency that a system accesses nonvolatile memory significantly impacts total energy consumption. In addition to offering native low power operation and low active current, the FM25e64 allows engineers to control the element time in the energy consumption equation with fast access speed and high frequency write capabilities to improve system performance with negligible energy consumption."
Samples of the
FM25e64 are available today from Digi-Key, Mouser and through other authorized Ramtron distribution partners, Ramtron said. Mass production of the FM25e64 is expected later this year with a suggested 10,000 unit resale price of 95 cents per part, Ramtron said.