Auto Grade FM25V10

The automotive industry is very conservative.  New products or ideas are adopted only after their quality and integrity have been proven. Things change relatively slowly.

A short time ago Ramtron made a small change. We adopted a policy of qualifying all new products to AEC Q100 standards rather than wait for a customer to request the qualification. The first product resulting from this policy is the FM25V(N)10. The FM25V(N)10 is a 1Mbit SPI F-RAM with a few new features that might be interesting to automotive engineers.

The V family is characterised by a lower Vdd, operating from 2V to 3.6V. Almost all new automotive designs are 3V nowadays. Many FPGAs, Micros and ASICs are capable of lower operating voltages so the V family offers  a memory that supports these designs.

The serial number feature of the new FM25V(N)10 is optional. It can be customised so that only a certain range of numbers are sold to one customer. This simple feature allows the software to ensure that the product is not a clone. It also has another benefit. It is guaranteed to be unique so every system made will have a different number. This could be useful as a MAC address, IP address or a similar number that uniquely identifies a product on a network.

The FM25V(N)10 has a fast SPI at 40MHz. Using F-RAM’s ability to write as fast as data is delivered over a serial bus allows the entire 1Mbit to be written in about 27mS. This is less time than it would take to write three pages of data to an EEPROM or Flash memory.

The serial memory used in automotive applications have been slowly moving towards higher density and lower Vdd. Ramtron’s change in qualification policy may have been small but it means that automotive engineers now have a nonvolatile serial memory solution ready and waiting for them as their demands materialise rather than having to request it and wait.

Auto grade F-RAM State Savers

Ramtron’s FM1105-GA and FM1106-GA State Savers have recently received AEC-Q100 Grade 1 qualification.  Our state saver devices save the state of signals on demand and restores them to the correct state automatically upon power up.  F-RAM technology uniquely enables this capability due to its fast write time, virtually unlimited write endurance, and low-power requirements.

The Grade 1 temperature qualification allows the FM1105-GA and FM1106-GA to operate over the entire automotive temperature range of -40 to +125 degrees C, enabling designers to benefit from F-RAM in systems throughout the car. The nonvolatile state saver is as simple to use as a D-type flip-flop.  It operates like conventional logic, but stores and retains the logic state in the absence of power, simplifying the design of system control functions.  The nonvolatile state saver with Grade 1 automotive qualification is well-suited for diverse applications including door lock and child safety position electronic latches, airbag deactivation switch, blower speed and vent position for cabin ventilation systems, dome light mode switch, and electrically heated steering wheel and seats, among other applications.

For more information, visit the State Saver page on the Ramtron corporate website. go>