Features - Storage Innovations:

STMicroelectronics REVEALS WORLD'S SMALLEST 180NM FLASH MEM

STMicroelectronics, one of the world's leading semiconductor manufacturers, has announced the immediate availability of the world's first volume production embedded Flash memory in advanced 180nm CMOS technology. ST's 180nm embedded Flash technology offers the world's smallest cell size, with each Flash cell occupying just 0.37um2. The extremely small cell size greatly reduces the silicon area required to build memory arrays on the chip, thereby reducing the chip manufacturing cost.

The new technology is particularly suited for automotive applications, where Embedded Flash is widely used in System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions for key functions such as engine management units as well as for navigation and Infotainment systems. It supports popular cores such as the ARM7, ARM9 and ST10, which are widely used in automotive applications, as well as multiprocessor architectures. Demonstrator chips featuring these cores are already undergoing customer qualification for the full automotive temperature range.

"The double achievement in delivering both the world's first high volume 180nm Embedded Flash technology and the industry's smallest cell size puts ST firmly at the forefront of embedded Flash technology and is a significant addition to our SoC portfolio," said Paolo Cappelletti, Group vice president and Non Volatile Memory Process Development Director of STMicroelectronics.

Fully compatible with the basic 180nm logic process (libraries and cores), the 180nm Embedded Flash technology includes a flexible macrocell, allowing customer-specified memory arrays up to 10Mbits to be quickly defined, with sectorization down to 8Kbytes. The macrocell also includes BIST (Built-In Self-Test) features.

STMicroelectronics was the first semiconductor manufacturer to introduce microcontrollers with embedded Flash memories and is today one of the world's leading suppliers of SoC devices containing embedded Flash. These are widely used in automotive, communications, consumer and computer peripheral applications.