Microchip moves serial EEPROMs to 5V

Microchip has introduced its first serial SRAM which operates off 5V. Likely applications are in automotive and industrial applications. 

The EEPROM market has completely moved to serial interfaces, and the flash market is also making this transition, due to the higher cost, board space and power consumption of parallel devices.

These 512kbit and 1Mbit SPI devices come in 8-pin packages. Speeds of up to 80Mbit/s are achieved via the quad-SPI, or SQI, protocol, providing the zero write-cycle times with near instantaneous data movement needed for offloading graphics, data buffering, displays and audio.
With their fast dual-SPI (SDI) throughput of 40Mbit/s and low active and sleep currents, these serial NVSRAM devices feature high-speed operation without the high pin counts of parallel NVSRAM, and power consumption comparable to FRAM, at lower price. 
This is beneficial for applications such as meters, black boxes and other data recorders, which require unlimited endurance or instantaneous writes in addition to non-volatile storage.
The integration of a SPI enables these SRAM to support the trend towards serial interfaces.

All six devices from the new serial SRAM family are available in 8-pin SOIC, TSSOP and PDIP packages, with density options of 512kbit and 1Mbit. 

The 23A1024 and 23LC1024 are available now for sampling and volume production, whilst the 23A512 and 23LC512 are expected to be available for sampling and volume production in October. The two non-volatile devices, 23LCV512 and 23LCV1024, are expected to be available for sampling and volume production in October.