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F-RAM for Smart E-Meters Slide 3

Terms heard throughout this presentation include the following: Smart E-meters is an advanced electric meter that time-stamps and records consumption and device diagnostic data and automatically communicates it to a utility company. EEPROM (Electrically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) is a common nonvolatile memory that uses floating-gate technology to store data. Much of this presentation will be the drawbacks of EEPROM for Smart E-Meters relative to F-RAM technology. Soak time is the 5 ms required to complete an EEPROM Page Write after the data is presented at the input buffers. Write On Power Loss is a fail-safe method in which an MCU senses system power loss and instantly performs a Page Write of critical data to a nonvolatile memory in the system. Write Endurance is the number of times a nonvolatile memory cell can be rewritten before it wears out. Wear leveling is a method to prolong EEPROM Write Endurance that uses a larger EEPROM capacity and a software algorithm to distribute writes across the memory array. Finally, F-RAM (Ferroelectric Random Access Memory) is a fast-write, high endurance, low-energy nonvolatile memory that uses ferroelectric technology to store data.

PTM Published on: 2015-01-26