Microchip announces the expansion of its serial SRAM portfolio with four new devices with 5V operation, which is used extensively in automotive and industrial applications. These low-cost 512 Kb and 1 Mb SPI devices maintain the portfolio’s low power consumption and small, 8-pin packages. 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, maths, 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, at costs which are significantly lower than any other type of non-volatile RAM. With their fast dual-SPI 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 power consumption comparable to FRAM, 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 in addition to non-volatile storage. These new 1 Mbit SRAMs enable designers of embedded products to provide more RAM at a much lower cost than moving to a larger microcontroller or processor; and with lower power consumption, pin counts and cost than parallel SRAM. The integration of a SPI enables these SRAM to support the trend towards serial interfaces. The EEPROM market has completely moved to serial interfaces, whilst the Flash market is rapidly making this transition, due to the higher cost, board space and power consumption of parallel devices.
All six devices from the new serial SRAM family are available in 8-pin SOIC, TSSOP and PDIP packages, with density options of 512 Kbits and 1 Mbit. The 23A1024 and 23LC1024 are available now for sampling and volume production, whilst the 23A512 and 23LC512 are expected to be available for sampling and volume production in October. The two non-volatile devices, 23LCV512 and 23LCV1024, are expected to be available for sampling and volume production in October.
