Also Debuts Non-Volatile, Battery-Backed Serial SRAMs at Significantly Lower Cost Than Any Other Non-Volatile SRAM, FRAM or Parallel SRAM; Available in 8-pin Packages
Microchip Technology expanded its serial SRAM portfolio with four new devices that feature the industry’s largest densities and speeds. They are also the industry’s first with 5V operation, which remains prevalent in automotive and industrial applications. These 512 Kb and 1 Mb SPI devices maintain the portfolio’s low power consumption and small, 8-pin packages at the low starting cost of $1.16 each in 10,000-unit quantities. Speeds of up to 80 Mbps are achieved via the quad-SPI, or SQI, protocol, providing the zero write-cycle times with near instantaneous data movement needed for offloading graphics, data buffering, data logging, displays, math, audio, video and other data-intensive functions.
Two additional family members—the 23LCV512 and 23LCV1024—offer the industry’s most cost-effective options for non-volatile, unlimited-endurance RAM, via battery backup. In fact, with their fast dual-SPI (SDI) throughput of 40 Mbps and low active and sleep currents, these serial NVSRAM devices feature high-speed operation without the high pin counts of parallel NVSRAM, and comparable power consumption to FRAM, all at a fraction of the price. This is beneficial for applications such as meters, black boxes and other data recorders, which require unlimited endurance or instantaneous writes along with non-volatile storage.
Development Support
Microchip is creating a PICtail daughter board, which it expects to make available in February 2013, for use with its Explorer series of modular PIC microcontroller development boards, as well as the XLP 16-bit Development Board. This daughter board will demonstrate the features of both the volatile and non-volatile devices in Microchip’s new serial SRAM family, enabling designers to quickly evaluate them.
Pricing & Availability
All six devices from the new serial SRAM family are available in 8-pin SOIC, TSSOP and PDIP packages. The density options are 512 Kbits and 1 Mbit. Pricing starts at $1.16 each in 10,000-unit quantities for the four volatile devices. The 23A1024 and 23LC1024 are available now for sampling and volume production. The 23A512 and 23LC512 are expected to be available for sampling and volume production in October. The two non-volatile devices — the 23LCV512 and 23LCV1024 — start at $1.32 each in 10,000-unit quantities, with sampling and volume production expected in October.
