Ramtron ships first F-RAM samples built on new IBM manufacturing line

COLORADO SPRINGS, USA: Ramtron International Corp., a leading developer and supplier of ferroelectric-based low-power memory and integrated semiconductor products, has announced broad sampling of the first pre-qualification ferroelectric random access memory (F-RAM) devices built on the company’s new manufacturing line at IBM.

The FM24C04C and FM24C16C are serial 5-volt devices with 4- and 16-kilobits of F-RAM memory, respectively. The devices offer a high-performance nonvolatile data collection and storage solution for electronic systems. Ramtron’s F-RAM products provide nonvolatile RAM memory performance with NoDelay writes, high read/write endurance, and low power consumption.

“Releasing samples of the FM24C04C and FM24C16C devices is a significant milestone in our new foundry program,” said Eric Balzer, Ramtron’s CEO. “These pre-qualification devices, which meet all datasheet specifications and our stringent quality standards, are available now for customer evaluation. Additional devices, including 3-volt I2C and 3- and 5-volt SPI products, will become available for sampling as testing is completed.”

The FM24C04C and FM24C16C feature a serial I2C interface, have an active current of 100µA (typical at 100kHz) and perform up to 1MHz bus frequency. The devices are direct drop-in replacements for 4- and 16-Kb serial EEPROM memories used in industrial controls, metering, medical, military, gaming, and computing applications, among others. The FM24C04C and FM24C16C are offered in an industry standard 8-pin SOIC package and operate over the industrial temperature range of -40°C to +85°C.

Ramtron’s FM24CxxC products offer single-byte writes that are 200 times faster than those of EEPROM. In addition, the devices offer no timing delays and can be written to at standard bus speeds as compared to EEPROM, which requires a 5- to 10-millisecond write delay before new data can be registered. The FM24C04C and FM24C16C feature 1-trillion write cycles, compared to 1-million write cycles for EEPROM, and have an extremely low operating current compared to competing nonvolatile memory products.