Spansion Producing Low-Density Serial Flash Memories

Spansion Inc. announced production of a new low-density serial flash memory family to expand its product portfolio and address additional applications in the consumer segment and in Greater China.

The new 4Mb, 8Mb and 16Mb FL-2K family is targeted for code storage applications in consumer electronics such as optical disk drives, cable and DSL modems, printers and routers as well as industrial applications such as smart meters.

The family features read performance of up to 85MHz for fast application boot, industrial temperature range, quality and reliability.

The new low-density family complements Spansion’s high-density and high-performance FL-S serial flash family.

Spansion is expanding with samples of new 80MHz double data rate (DDR) serial flash memory. The FL-S family now delivers 40% faster bandwidth, up to 80MB/s. This performance is for automotive instrument clusters and industrial applications like home energy management systems that need to quickly serve rich graphics to LCD displays. The FL serial flash family now scales from 4Mb up to 1Gb to serve the needs of embedded applications with product options for single, dual and quad I/O read operation as well as DDR.

"Serial flash is one of the fastest growing memory markets with a forecasted 15% CAGR for revenue through 2017," said Alan Niebel, CEO of Web-Feet Research. "Low-density SPI currently has the highest unit volume. However, there’s high growth in the mid- to high-densities where performance is more critical. These additions to the Spansion portfolio will be welcomed by customers trying to simplify their supply chain."

"Spansion has innovated in high performance, high density serial flash memory solutions to provide our customers with differentiated products for their designs," noted Jackson Huang, VP of segment marketing. "The Spansion FL-2K family rounds out our portfolio of serial flash memory solutions with options for low-density applications and provides our customers a full range of Serial Flash memory backed by Spansion’s exceptional customer service and support."

Key Facts of the FL-2K family

• 4Mb, 8Mb, and 16Mb products are in production.
• Industrial temperature range supported (-40C to +85C)
• Industry-standard 8-pin SO (208 mil and 150 mil) packages with Spansion’s Universal Footprint
• Low pin count simplifies board layout, lowers cost, and reduces the form factor of many embedded designs.
• Uniform 4Kb sectors for fast parameter storage
• Software and hardware write protection for security and IP protection
• Read performance (4Mb – 85Mhz, 8Mb – 76Mhz, 16Mb – 65Mhz) for quick boot
• Spansion FFS: customized software drivers and flash file system software available at no additional cost.

128Mb and 256Mb FL-S 80MHz DDR devices are sampling now with production in Q4. 512Mb and 1Gb versions are available based on customer demand.