First let’s explain what FRAM is. FRAM is a semiconductor product in electronic components. Semiconductor products include microprocessors, logic devices, simulator parts, storage devices and other devices.
FRAM is one of several storage devices such as DRAM and flash memory. FRAM stands for Ferroelectric Random Access Memory. It is also called ferroelectric memory because it uses ferroelectric components to store data. The following Fujitsu agent Yingshang micro – introduction about the characteristics of ferroelectric memory RAM.
◼ Four FRAM Features FRAM has four distinct features that other traditional memory products do not. Features: “non-volatile”, “high read and write durability”, “fast write speed” and “low power consumption”.
FRAM can meet customer storage requirements through four features, such as getting more data and protecting written data.
◼ Comparison with other memory Table 1 shows a comparison with other EEPROM, flash, and SRAM storage devices that can be replaced with a FRAM.
FRAM has better “guaranteed write cycle” and “write cycle time” characteristics than EEPROM and FLASH memory of non-volatile memory. While SRAM requires a data backup battery to hold data, RAM does not because it is non-volatile memory.
For these reasons, FRAM has advantages over other traditional storage devices.
◼ RAM characteristics The high read/write durability is first called “high read/write durability”.
“High read and write durability” means that memory can read and write data multiple times. The higher the number, the more data you can read and write.
The FRM guarantees a maximum of 10 trillion writes, which is equivalent to 1 million writes in an EEPROM. Although some of the new EEPROMS can guarantee 4 million writes, the number is still very different from that of a FRAM.
Ten trillion writes means you can rewrite data in a very short amount of time, every 0.03 milliseconds for 10 years. Under normal use, this value means almost unlimited, and with FRAM you can get data more frequently and accurately than with EEPROM.
By using ferroelectric memory with this excellent feature, customers can collect data with high frequency and high precision. So customers can understand the real behavior of data by looking at complex data curves that they haven’t seen before.
◼ Fram feature with fast write speed Next, let’s continue with “fast write speed”.
Write operations take less time to complete in a FRAM than in an EEPROM. This means that ferroelectric memory has faster write speeds.
An EEPROM requires a write time of up to 5ms because of the time-consuming erasure that is required before a write operation. The FRAM does not require this erasure operation and only overwrites the data, which is simpler, so the write time is as short as 150ns, more than 33,000 times faster than the EEPROM. With this fast write, even if the power is suddenly cut off, the write operation can be completed before the power is cut off.
In fact, we used our demo board for more than 100 failed data write tests. As a result, it observed that there were no write errors in FRAM, whereas EEPROM had one write error every three tests.
Even after this test, we confirmed that even in the event of a sudden power outage, it is unlikely that a write error will occur in the FRAM.
◼ RAM features slash reduction of power consumption The third feature is “low power”.
When we focus on write operations, FRAM can reduce power consumption by 92%. This is because the write time of a FRM is much shorter than that of an EEPROM.
The difference depends on the conditions, but when running with very frequent data records, FRAM helps reduce the power consumption of the customer’s final product.
FRAM is a nonvolatile memory that does not require the data-holding current of SRAM. As a result, customers will no longer need to replace the SRAM with a data backup battery for the FRAM.