Microcontrollers: Benefits of Flash Microcontrollers

1. Increased reliability/Enhanced erasing function

The fact that the charge flows from the floating gate to the control gate when data is erased reduces the amount of memory cell degradation and therefore increases reliability. The protruding section on the floating gate into which the electric field concentrates creates a tunnel effect, significantly improving erasability.
This has resulted in a tremendous reduction in reprogramming time, with 1 Mbit batch reprogramming requiring approximately 10 seconds. In addition, programming time remains the same, even after numerous write cycles.

2. Single-voltage power supply operation

A 12 V power supply is required to write data into a standard flash memory. SANYO's flash microcontrollers can be programmed using 5 V or 3.3 V single-voltage power sources.

3. Small erase and programming memory units

All memory areas are divided into blocks of 128 and 2k bytes, and data is written and erased in block units. This makes SANYO's flash microcontrollers extremely convenient for data-handling applications.

4. Flexible on-board programming

Not only do SANYO's flash microcontrollers offer on-board programming capabilities, but they also provide a high degree of freedom in their choice of write port (a port that functions as an I/O port during normal operation can be switched to function as a write port during programming) and programs can be tailored to user or end product needs.

5. Rewriting by program (self-modification)

SANYO flash microcontrollers support flash memory data rewriting under program control. Flash memory is nonvolatile, and data can therefore be stored without a power supply. Battery backup, as required with DRAM, is unnecessary. Not only can large amounts of data be accommodated on single chip, but data processing capabilities can also be built-in. This makes SANYO's flash memory microcontrollers ideal for memory card applications.
This function also enables self-modification of programs.

This memory is also available in SANYO data storage products.
(LC86F1XX/8XX series)