F-RAM's two major markets are growing exponentially: automotive and IoT

Among the various non-volatile memory markets, such as flash memory, EEPROM, MRAM, non-volatile RAM, phase change memory, SSD and mobile hard disk, ferroelectric memory ( F-RAM ) may be the least noticeable one. Due to its high price, small capacity and narrow application market, the market of F-RAM has never been large. Ramtron , one of the main suppliers of F-RAM, is no exception. Although it is the first company in the world to bring ferroelectric storage technology into commercial applications, its market performance has not made a big breakthrough because its market has been limited to industrial applications such as elevators and electric meters.

However, since the end of 2008, RuiChuang has begun to reposition its target market and readjust its product development and market expansion strategies. In 2010, the new strategy began to show its power, as RuiChuang's revenue has doubled this year, and there is no sign of abating its growth momentum, and its revenue is expected to double again next year.

So, what strategy has enabled RuiChuang to achieve such a reborn market performance? Liu Shengqiang, General Manager of Sales for RuiChuang Asia Pacific, said frankly that what we did was to break through the original thinking limitations and rethink the applications in the market that really need F-RAM's unique selling points, and to enter F-RAM into the currently growing automotive electronics market. The main automotive electronics applications currently covered include: airbags, FM radios, ABS (anti-lock) brake systems, car audio, active navigation systems, automatic balancing systems, and automatic anti-pinch windows.

"Large-brand car manufacturers have already adopted F-RAM to improve the quality of automotive electronic systems, and now many small and medium-sized brands are also moving towards this trend. For example, the number of F-RAMs used in each Hyundai car has reached 15. Improving the quality of electronic systems is the fastest and lowest-cost way to improve the consumer grade of cars," said Liu Shengqiang.

In addition, Ruichuang has also broken through the inertial thinking of focusing only on the target markets of elevators and electric meters, and began to open its sights to a wider range of industrial markets, such as CNC machine tools, motion control, automatic doors of buildings/subways/cars/trains, smart cards, RFID and security applications.

Of course, Mr. Liu pointed out that these markets are not enough for us to achieve annual revenue of $100 million, $200 million or even more, so our ultimate development direction in the future is the Internet of Things , which is the only way to make Ruichuang a more competitive large company.

Compared with the main competing product EEPROM, F-RAM memory has a read and write speed 30,000 times faster, a 100,000 times higher erase and write number, and 200 times lower power consumption. In addition, it has excellent anti-interference ability (including anti-gamma rays), extremely high reliability and working life. These unique selling points are unmatched by any other non-volatile memory. But how can these unique selling points be transformed into commercial competitive advantages in the automotive electronics market, industrial control market, and the upcoming Internet of Things market? Please see the following analysis report specially written for you by this magazine.

The automotive F-RAM market is expanding rapidly

Many automotive electronic applications now require extremely fast, extremely reliable, and extremely long-life memory, while not requiring high capacity. F-RAM is the most suitable choice because EEPROM is too slow. Although MRAM is also very fast, it is extremely susceptible to magnetic interference, so it cannot be used in cars with very harsh working environments.

For example, the airbag system requires that the physical location information of the car be written into the black box in a very short time. In the event of a traffic accident, accurate location information can help the victim or the insurance company to clarify the responsibility and end the dispute more quickly. If EEPROM is used, the physical location information recorded when the accident occurs is likely to be only the location a few seconds before the accident, which is very unfavorable for accident compensation negotiations. Therefore, almost all high-end car airbag systems now use F-RAM because its high reliability ensures that it can accurately record the exact location of the car every minute and every second in any environment.

The same is true for car radio systems. When users tune in, the frequency information in the memory must be changed quickly to help the back-end PLL lock the frequency better. If the memory write speed is too slow, the PLL lock frequency is likely to be one beat slower than the frequency pointed to by the external adjustment pointer, which will make it difficult for users to align with a certain broadcast frequency, and the listening effect of the FM speaker will not be very good, and there will be a lot of noise or noise. Consumers can complain about this and say that the performance of this car is not good. Therefore, although the unit price of F-RAM is much higher than that of EEPROM, many users who pursue better and more car consumer quality would rather spend more money to buy a car with an F-RAM audio system.

The same is true for GPS navigation and location services. It is not new that today's car navigation systems can provide traffic location information and weather forecasts. People prefer to see surrounding environmental information on GPS navigation systems, such as information about the car's location, and to be able to provide some dynamic service information around it, such as hotels, restaurants, tourist attractions, and gas stations. Since cars are generally very fast, non-volatile memory with extremely high write speed and erase and write times is required. This performance requirement can only be achieved by F-RAM. Other types of non-volatile memory either cannot meet this requirement or cannot meet that requirement.

In the application of electric anti-pinch window control system, F-RAM allows real-time recording of the position of the window rotation motor, that is, it can detect whether the window is fully closed and opened in real time without the need for additional position sensors. Other non-volatile RAMs are difficult to meet real-time performance requirements or reliability requirements.

F-RAM can update road location information in real time

[page]

The IoT market has unlimited potential

The IoT market provides F-RAM with endless development space. For example, in the future, every item in a supermarket will have an RFID tag, so that when the item is taken out of the box, the cashier will no longer need to manually charge the item. Instead, the item will be charged automatically as long as it walks out of the box at a normal speed. However, due to the standard and RFID tag cost issues, this application is still far from being commercialized on a large scale.

Currently, the most commercially deployed application is the automatic toll collection system for automobile highways. Traditional automobile RFID tags use EEPROM, which has a relatively slow writing speed and a relatively short writing distance. Therefore, in order to allow the automatic toll collection system to have enough time to collect data, process data and write the collected data, basically all the automatic toll collection channels for automobiles are currently equipped with 5.8GHz RF frequency instead of the standard 860M-960MHz collection frequency. This type of system may take up to several seconds to collect a device, so a higher frequency signal must be used to extend the signal radiation distance, thereby gaining time for reading and writing data, and there are also certain restrictions on vehicle speed, which is unacceptable for congested sections with dense vehicles.

But if the car RFID tag uses F-RAM, the automatic toll station can use the standard 860M-960MHz data acquisition frequency, because F-RAM extends the writing distance from 5m to 15m, and the writing rate is very fast, 100 cars can be read and written within 1 second, which can greatly save the deployment cost and customs clearance time of the automatic toll collection system. In addition, the writing voltage of F-RAM is only 1.6V, and the writing voltage of EEPROM is as high as 13V, so the transponder using EEPROM memory needs additional battery power supply, while F-RAM does not need it, so it can save a lot of power consumption. The performance difference between EEPROM and F-RAM is shown in the table below.

RFID performance parameters: comparison between F-RAM and EEPROM

Application of RFID in electronic toll collection system

[page]

Uncovering the potential of the industrial application market

The application of F-RAM in the industrial market is no longer limited to the traditional elevator and electric meter markets. CNC machine tools, subways/cars/trains/automatic doors of buildings have also begun to adopt F-RAM in large quantities. This is because these industrial applications require extremely fast response speed or data writing speed, as well as extremely high reliability and service life. Only F-RAM perfectly meets these unique performance requirements.

Electricity meters are a traditional industrial application for F-RAM.

In addition to the above applications, more and more industrial computers are now beginning to use F-RAM to replace SRAM as a fast cache between the CPU and main memory. Compared with SRAM, F-RAM has faster read and write speeds, lower power consumption, and does not require additional power supply. The volume of the same capacity can be smaller, which can effectively save design space. The most important thing is that F-RAM is more suitable for integrated applications than SRAM, which can greatly reduce the complexity of system design and improve system reliability.