S29AL016J55FFAR20

S29AL016J55FFAR20 Application Field and Working Principle

S29AL016J55FFAR20 is a famous NOR Flash, made by Spansion, which is widely used in consumer electronics, medical markets and industrial fields. It is a high-performance, low-power solution for space-constrained applications, including eight different device densities that range from 16Mb to 128Mb. In the following paragraphs, we will introduce S29AL016J55FFAR20’s application field and working principle in detail.

Application Field

The S29AL016J55FFAR20 is a 32 megabyte NOR flash memory device, operated at a voltage range of 1.65V to 1.95V and specified over a temperature range of -40°C to +85°C. Thanks to the above features, it is a perfect choice for industrial control and embedded applications, such as Set-Top-Box (STB), DSL/Cable Modem, VoIP Phones, Industrial Printer, Portable Medical Device, Smart Card, Location Based System and Car Applications.

Working Principle

S29AL016J55FFAR20 has two parts: the E²Prom cell and the SRAM cell. It operates according to NOR Flash architecture. Its uniqueness lies in its ability to store both code-image and data. NOR Flash has multiple cell configurations (1-bit, 2-bit, 4-bit and 8-bit cell). The 8-bit cells allow for 8 bits of data to be simultaneously programmed into the flash array. It has the capability to execute code directly from the NOR array, that is why it is suitable for systems which require fast read access for both code and data.

A typical NOR flash programming process consists of an erase phase followed by a write phase. During the erase phase, each cell of the NOR flash device is reset to a known state, so that new data is able to be written. The erase process is followed by the write cycle, in which the new data is written into the device.

To read data from the device, a low current is sent to the selected cell. If the cell that is being read is programmed with a logic ‘1’ then a low voltage is read back, and if the cell is programmed with ‘0’ then a high voltage is read back.