Designers face the challenge of keeping system costs down while still accomplishing this task. If this record-keeping portion of the system is tampered with, revenues collected from the end customer could be drastically reduced. To prevent the loss of billing data in the event of a power failure, this data is stored regularly into non-volatile memory—as often as once a minute or 525,600 writes per year. This means that a high-endurance memory such as an EEPROM or serial SRAM and a real-time clock that is accurate over temperature is required.
For reliable code and data storage, Microchip offers a broad range of NOR flash memory products, including Parallel Flash, SPI, and SQI®. The various available densities, wide voltage and temperature ranges, and very small packages allow Microchip flash to excel in any metering application. SuperFlash products support cost-effective, non-volatile memory data storage solutions while offering industry-leading features coupled with fixed and fast program/erase times, ultra-low power consumption, high endurance, and excellent reliability.