The newly developed idling program erase management unit (IPEMU) function enables the flash memory to control rewrites itself when the vehicle’s engine is stopped by a start-stop (anti-idling) system. This makes it possible to terminate the CPU and SRAM that activates the flash control and reduces power consumption during idle state by 99 percent.
By adopting these technologies, Renesas has developed 128 KB (kilobyte) flash memory prototypes employing 90nm 1T-MONOS flash memory that successfully achieved the industry's first P/E endurance over 100 million cycles with a low rewrite current of 98μA.
This rewrite current is two orders of magnitude smaller than previously achieved and translates into a rewrite energy of 0.07 mJ/8 KB.
The ability to easily add flash memory to devices employing a variety of processes, combined with low power consumption, is expected to also expand the range of possible IoT applications.
Renesas announced this technology on February 2 at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) held in San Francisco from January 31 to February 4, 2016.
(Note 1) Renesas has been using MONOS (metal-oxide-nitride-oxide-silicon) as the semiconductor material for EEPROM products and secure MCUs for more than 20 years. MONOS technology accumulated over many years is used for the on-chip flash memory of the company’s MCUs. Renesas also employs an exclusive transistor configuration for its MONOS flash memory.
(Note 2) The abbreviation Tj refers to the junction temperature of the chip.
(Note 3) Unification of mechanical and electrical elements involves the integration into a single unit of mechanical components and electronic circuits in order to achieve greater compactness and energy efficiency.
(Note 4) eFUSE is a type of non-volatile memory (one-time programmable read-only memory: OTP) that can be fabricated using the CMOS process.
About Renesas Electronics Corporation
Renesas Electronics Corporation (TSE: 6723), the world’s number one supplier of microcontrollers, is a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions including microcontrollers, SoC solutions and a broad-range of analog and power devices. Business operations began as Renesas Electronics in April 2010 through the integration of NEC Electronics Corporation (TSE:6723) and Renesas Technology Corp., with operations spanning research, development, design and manufacturing for a wide range of applications. Headquartered in Japan, Renesas Electronics has subsidiaries in 20 countries worldwide. More information can be found at www.renesas.com.
(Remarks) All registered trademarks or trademarks are the property of their respective owners.
View source version on businesswire.com: http://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20160203006140/en/
Contact:
Japan
Renesas Electronics Corporation
Kyoko Okamoto, +
81-3-6773-3001
Email Contact
