Christoph Hammerschmidt EE Times Europe (06/24/2009 5:10 AM EST)

MUNICH, Germany — The non-volatile Aeon memory technology has been qualified for automotive use according to the AEC-Q100 standard. The technology could compete with certain applications where hitherto EEPROMs and Flash memory has been used.

According to the vendor of Aeon devices, Virage Logic Corp. (Fremont, Calif), this semiconductor technology is the first one qualified according to the AEC-Q100 standard that is build exclusively using standard CMOS processes and not requireing additional masks or processing steps during manufacturing.

The company says that its NV memory is cheaper in production than flash memory since it does away with costly manufacturing steps associated with floating gates, one of the characteristics of flash memory. At the same time, Aeon reduces engineering efforts and costs involved with integrating the non-volatile memory into system-on-chip (SoC) solutions, the vendor claims.

While one of the Aeon main features is its multi-time programmability with up to 100.000 write-erase cycles, the vendor positions its automotive products for applications where memory content needs to be set or altered only rarely.

For instance, it can replace one-time programmable (OTP) solutions with a fully electrically testable NVM block. Examples are trim, calibration and configuration as well as instrumentation and localization. It can also be used for applications associated to in-field customization, encryption keys and non-volatile counters.

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