Cypress: Semper NOR Flash Memory Family for Automotive and Industrial Applications

Cypress Semiconductor Corp. announced its Semper NOR flash memory family that delivers an industry’s combination of safety and reliability for automotive and industrial applications.

The Semper flash family is a memory that is architected and designed to meet the automotive industry’s ISO 26262 functional safety standard for building fail-safe embedded automotive systems. The family is automotive-qualified, ASIL-B functional safety compliant, and provides endurance and data retention at the extreme temperatures common in automotive and industrial applications.

“Safety and reliability are paramount concerns for autonomous driving and industrial applications,” said Rainer Hoehler, VP, flash business unit, 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 company’s EnduraFlex architecture simplifies system design by enabling a Semper flash device to be divided into multiple partitions, independently optimized for high endurance or long retention. For frequent data writes, a partition can be configured to deliver up to 1.28 million program-erase cycles for 512Mb density parts and 2.56 million cycles for 1Gb parts. For code and configuration storage, a partition can be configured to retain data for 25 years.

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The Semper flash family includes AEC-Q100 automotive-qualified devices with an extended temperature range of -40°C to +125°C, supports 1.8V and 3.0V operating ranges, and is available in densities of 512Mb through 4Gb. The devices are offered with Quad Serial Peripheral Interface (SPI), Octal SPI and HyperBus interfaces. The Octal and HyperBus interface devices are compliant with the JEDEC eXpanded SPI (xSPI) standard for high-speed x8 serial NOR flash and offer read bandwidth of 400 Mb/s.

“NXP has successfully supported fast expanding memory requirements by pairing our MCUs and SoCs with Cypress’ HyperBus memories,” said Ray Cornyn, VP and GM, vehicle dynamic solutions, NXP B.V. “The next-generation Semper NOR Flash family with HyperBus from Cypress provides a strong roadmap for continuing that success as it looks to support future market needs both for safety and robustness.“

512Mb Semper flash devices are sampling to lead customers, with qualified samples available in 4Q18. Volume production of the devices with 24-ball BGA, 16-pin SOIC and 8-contact WSON packages is expected in 2Q19.