PHILPS said 0.14 micron embedded flash /EEPROM production

Announced its 0.18 micron CMOS embedded flash /EEPROM technology has been in full compliance with the Grade-1 automotive electronics applications PHILPS before the 0.14 micron /EEPROM movinand began mass production in the factory is located in Nijmegen city of Holland of the wafer, which is PHILPS second companies meet the process requirements of the production of this factory.

PHILPS said that embedded flash memory and EEPROM memory has become an important part of many of today's system on chip solutions. It not only provides in line with different software on these chips for programming or field software upgrade, but also realize the local important data such as PIN password or address book information storage, and can retain these data when the device is powered off. Typical applications include mobile phones, televisions, MP3 players and smart cards, as well as wire driven automotive electronics systems.

PHILPS semiconductor embedded memory technology strategic planning manager Frans List said: "the new system and has been the advent of the on-chip solution is to develop more advanced treatment ability should not be because of the lack of appropriate embedded memory by obstruction. Through the development of low power consumption for high performance embedded into the CMOS process and the optimization of the nonvolatile technology, we have confidence in our memory and EEPROM solutions in the future at least two generations of CMOS processing technology in competitive."

Gartner Mike, vice president of Dataquest semiconductor Williams said: "for the next generation of automotive electronics applications, a large number of market requirements will reduce the overall reduction of price and volume, and through the OEM model to achieve product promotion. PHILPS's embedded flash and EEPROM development process technology combines low power and scalability, enabling customers to simplify the next generation of design platforms and achieve significant cost benefits."

Nonvolatile memory technology uses channel hot electron is different from the vast majority of competitors (CHE) into the program memory unit and a type of Fu Lei Nordheim tunneling and erasing flash, PHILPS's /EEPROM technology in programming and erasing have used a type of tunneling Northeim fourre. The result of the low power consumption of the memory cell is one of the reasons why the PHILPS 0.18 micron flash memory can fully meet the requirements of Grade-1 (ambient temperature of 125 DEG C). This makes this process applicable to the realization of PHILPS is for automotive electronics applications (such as support for FlexRay wire driven system) developed a powerful ARM based microcontroller. Low power consumption is also the reason why EEPROM technology is highly suitable for smart cards, especially those that do not contact smart cards, they need to obtain operating energy from the RF domain to the card reader and card reader to the card communication. In these applications, ultra low power consumption is a very important design requirement.

According to reports, PHILPS's 0.14 micron flash /EEPROM has begun mass production in foundry PHILPS in Nijmegen, and for including PHILPS UOCIII (Ultimate One Chip) super monolithic application, TV, it developed a design environment for designers so that they can be scalable and non scalable IP integration to the same on chip. This result solves the problem of scalability of different IP blocks (e.g., flash memory /EEPROM, analog, SRAM and I/O). Thus, the designer has a steering process more cost advantages compared with 0.13 micron CMOS, do not need to bear the risk completely redesigned, and no additional copper interconnect, 193 nano plate moment method and process of 300 nanometer wafer processing complex problems.

Another advantage is that the nominal supply voltage is maintained at 1.8 volts. It doesn't have to be as low as 1.2 volts in the standard 0.13 micron technology. As a result, the product line can be easily expanded without having to change the supply voltage in the product specification.

For those who want to switch from the re code to fixed code customers, PHILPS provides a flash to ROM conversion services. This service is also in the process to achieve the requirements of 0.14 micron process automotive electronics applications. PHILPS has also developed a 16K byte EEPROM block for its IP yellow pages (IP Yellow Page) and Nx-Builder system on chip design process. This memory block can be used in conjunction with the flash memory to increase byte write function.