In the development of an MPU, ASIC, ASSP or any type of LSI chip, you might have a need for nonvolatile memory (NVM) in your design specification. For instance, you may want to store a security code before or after shipping your products or you may wish to make a last-minute change on your software just before releasing to the market. If you are DRAM or SRAM designer, you want to program redundancy allocation without requiring a laser-blow fuse.

A couple of nonvolatile memory technologies are already available for embedded system LSI's like "Embedded EEPROM" and "Embedded Flash". However, these process technologies are much more expensive but less advanced than standard CMOS processes. Similarly, an external Flash memory could be used but it adds extra cost and can be easily read making security codes or any other contents easily reverse engineered.

NSCore's PermSRAM® is now the key to differentiate your products from any others. It is a "Nonvolatile" SRAM using standard CMOS processes without any extra masks, while its memory cell size is as small as that of an SRAM. Please share a little space on your design area. You can enjoy numerous benefits of nonvolatile memory functions.

1. Remove ROMs

Flash/EPPROM have been widely used as built-in program storage. However, incurred double the cost to have both ROM and SRAM in the system because the embedded software which is stored in the ROM has to be loaded into SRAM before booting up. Our PermSRAM® can merge both devices into a nonvolatile RAM on CMOS silicon and does not impact program execution performance because the PermSRAM® has equivalent data transfer rate as standard SRAM.
You can remove ROMs from your design for reduction of area and cost.

2. Competitive to e-Fuse

PermSRAM® needs less than 1/100 of the silicon area that e-Fuse requires while being fully field programmable, less than 5V/100uA to program, and under 10usec/bit for programming.

3. No Charge Pump Necessary

PermSRAM® does not need a charge pump due to the lower programming voltage requirement of 5V typically available on the system board. In case of the small capacity macro like 64bit-256bit, PermSRAM® can reduce the area requirement 10%-20% compared to other technologies that require a charge pump.

4. Highly Secured Storage

Data stored in e-Fuse or built-in SRAM ASIC + external ROM is not secure since the data can be easily read by accessing the data bus or through visual inspection of the chip. For this reason, these NVRAM technologies are not ideal solutions for applications needing high levels of security such as security keys or sensitive program code.
With PermSRAM® one-time programmable (OTP) memory, data communication is done only on silicon and the contents of the stored data is very difficult to observe from the outside. Making it almost impossible to extract the contants of the memory, PermSRAM® strongly protects the customer's sensitive data.

5. We resolve your problem as a system solution

PermSRAM® can be used in much more applications than those listed above. Our skilled consultants will help to satisfy customer's various needs from the system point of view.