Flash memories

STMicroelectronics has introduced its first industry standard Flash memories with dual-bank operation: M29DW323D and M29DW324D.

The architecture has an array of eight parameters and 63 main blocks, divided into two banks of eight and 24 Mb for the M29DW323D and 16 Mb each for the M29DW324D.

The dual-bank operation allows data to be read from one bank while the other bank is being written to or erased. Parts are available with their boot blocks at the top or bottom of the memory's address space.

These 32 Mb 3 V memories organised as 4 Mb x 8 bit or 2 Mb x 16 bit, and also include a boot block. Both products also have an extra 64 KB extended memory block at the same addresses as the parameter blocks and accessible for reading and programming in extended block mode.

The parts run from a single-core supply voltage of 2.7 to 3.6 V for program, erase and read operations. A 12 V supply is required for a fast program mode, in which the part can program two words (four Bytes) at once, for a typical programming time of 10 µs per Byte/word.