Cypress Semiconductor recently announced its Semper NOR Flash memory family. The Semper Flash series is designed for automotive and industrial applications, with an emphasis on increasing safety and reliability. Specifically, Semper Flash’s architecture—called EnduraFlex—is designed to meet the automotive industry’s ISO 26262 functional safety standard for building fail-safe embedded automotive systems.
EnduraFlex allows Semper Flash devices to be divided into multiple partitions, each independently optimized for endurance or retention. For frequent data writes, a partition can be configured to produce up to 1.28 million program-erase cycles for 512MB density parts and 2.56 million cycles for 1GB parts. Additionally, for code and configuration storage, a partition can be configured to retain data for as long as 25 years.
“Safety and reliability are paramount concerns for autonomous driving and industrial applications,” said Rainer Hoehler, Vice President of the Flash Business Unit at Cypress. “We designed the new Semper Flash family specifically to achieve functional safety compliance to protect against system failures.”
“The Semper family also provides the industry’s best combination of superior read bandwidth, instant-on support, high-endurance, and long retention for reliable long-term performance in harsh operating environments.”
The Semper NOR Flash line is automotive-qualified, ASIL-B functional safety compliant and provides data retention during temperatures extremes—ranging from -40°C (-40°F) to 125°C (257°F)—which are common in automotive and industrial settings. Furthermore, Semper NOR Flash provides 1.8V and 3.0V operating ranges and is available in densities of 512MB through 4GB.
Cypress expects production of its Semper NOR Flash series to begin in early 2019. As the global automotive, manufacturing and industrial sectors continue their march toward complete automation, the pace of innovation in the semiconductor industry will undoubtedly continue to speed up as companies strive to create safer and more reliable integrated systems.
For more information about Semper NOR Flash memory, visit Cypress’ website .