Product of the Week: Infineon Technologies’ SEMPER™ NOR Flash Memory
September 12, 2022
Sponsored Story
As today’s data economy emerges, it demands that the valuable data we gather, share, and exchange is protected, especially in safety-critical applications where data is more valuable than nearly anywhere else.
Robust memory is one of many solutions that can help. But how can development teams quickly, safely, securely, and cost-effectively implement robust memory architectures that meet the requirements of standards like ISO 26262 and IEC 61508?
Designed for safety and reliability in high performance environments, Infineon Technologies’ SEMPER NOR flash memory family of 512 Mb to 2Gb devices are designed to surpass automotive and functional safety requirements. The devices are equipped with features such as the Quad SPI, JEDEC xSPI-compatible Octal, and HYBERBUS interfaces, built with the company’s proprietary MIRRORBIT technology.
MIRRORBIT is an advanced NOR flash process technology that enables the device’s ability to store two bits per cell for higher capacity storage in high density devices.
To support safety and security in industrial, automotive, and other safety-critical markets, Infineon layers features such as an endurance flex architecture providing multiple partitions each configuring up to 25 years of data retention, or 1+ million cycles of endurance. For diagnostics, the company also provides the Safe Boot recovery option and error checking.
As an ideal requirement for memory applications, SEMPER™ NOR flash memory supports ECC (SECDED) in addition to CRC protection over interface and memory data. For direct program execution the solution supports speeds up to 400 MB/s for instant-on for applications with XiP (eXecute in Place), this can be used as an alternative for code shadowing to RAM.
SEMPER™ NOR Flash Memory is AEC-Q100 qualified and tested for harsh temperatures of (-40°C to +125°C, and provides 10+ years of supply and availability. For automotive applications, the solution is compliant with ISO 26262 ASIL-B, and is ASIL-D ready and IEC 61508 ready.
All of the aforementioned compliance and safety features, in addition to the SEMPER Solutions Hub, allow developers to accelerate their development projects with peace of mind knowing their memory applications for data and code provide the tools needed to integrate SEMPER NOR Flash into their application.
Infineon’s SEMPER™ NOR Flash Memory In Action
The SEMPER™ NOR Flash Hub is for developers of safety-critical SEMPER™ NOR flash designs, equipped with all the tools needed to get a system started. It includes software and hardware development kits, support for various architectures such as Infineon PSoC 6 and AURIX TC375, Raspberry Pi and NVIDIA Jetson Nano, Linux/U-Boot support, and more.
The SEMPER™ SDKs include production-grade drivers, application code examples, hardware abstraction layers, and design environment integrations hooks:
- To program, erase and read, and enable features like endurance flex region, the base package with NOR Flash is ideal as it’s compatible with all SEMPER™ NOR Flash memories.
- Functional safety capabilities are enabled via APIs on SEMPER™ SDK Safe, with the ability to perform Safe Boot, Cyclic Redundancy Check (CRC) operations, and Error Correcting Code (ECC) operations. SEMPER™ SDK Safe is also compatible with all SEMPER™ NOR flash memories and supports functional safety.
- Additional safety and security features are provided by Infineon’s SEMPER™ SDK Secure for secure provisioning, secure storage, and lifecycle management. In this case, the SEMPER™ SDK Secure is only compatible with SEMPER™ Secure memories.
Lastly, SEMPER™ SDKs are compatible with the Infineon ModusToolbox and AURIX Development Studio, and Microsoft Visual Studio Code development environments that include integration hooks available via the SEMPER™ SDK.
Getting Started with Infineon’s SEMPER™ NOR Flash Memory
Safety-critical designs can be easily started through the SEMPER Solutions Hub. The Hub includes a table that outlines the compatibility of SEMPER™ NOR flash devices, in addition to hardware and tools available here.
The Hub also includes download links to each of the three SDKs:
Here, you can purchase hardware kits designed to help you get your designs started in no time. Additionally, Infineon provides more information about the SEMPER NOR flash memory family with a video introducing the products, a download link to the data sheets, and the SEMPER™ Access Program for access to design files and guides, reference designs, and sample code. To join, visit SEMPER AP.
Additional Resources:
- Product brief: https://www.infineon.com/dgdl/Infineon-SEMPER_NOR_Flash_Memory-ProductBrief-v01_00-EN.pdf?fileId=8ac78c8c7ddc01d7017e671f419a57aa
- Product page: https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/product/memories/nor-flash/semper-nor-flash/?redirId=157529
- Product press release: https://www.infineon.com/cms/en/about-infineon/press/market-news/2022/INFATV202201-043.html
