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Tokyo Electron Device Announces New TB-OP-FCRAM Evaluation Board Released for Low Power Consumption Memory FCRAM

Posted on: Tuesday, 9 September 2008, 09:00 CDT

Tokyo Electron Device Limited (TED) has developed the inrevium "TB-OP-FCRAM" evaluation board, for FCRAM developed by Fujitsu Microelectronics Limited. The board facilitates the testing of low-power consumption memory FCRAM in the SoC development by users who develop their own system LSIs. TED targets selling the board for the customers who develop consumer digital product such as digital TV, digital camera and portable media player.

Although DDR2 SDRAM is the current mainstream technology in the DRAM market, its use in digital consumer electronic products requires the mounting of multiple chips to obtain adequate data bandwidth. However, this brings a number of problems including an increase in power consumption due to the termination resistor required and the space of footprint associated with the large package size.

The 256Mbit FCRAM released by Fujitsu Microelectronics in June 2008 has 64-bit bus architecture. This means it can operate at a lower frequency while still providing the same data transfer capacity as SDRAM that uses 16 or 32-bit bus. This lower frequency eliminates the need for an external termination resistor and reduces the power consumption by up to about 1W (approximately 70%), compared to two pieces of 16-bit bus width DDR2 SDRAM of equivalent performance.

The inrevium TB-OP-FCRAM includes a Virtex(R)-5 FPGA XC5VLX50-1FFG676C and 256Mbit FCRAM, and allows users who are developing SoC to perform interface evaluations using FCRAM quickly and at an early stage in the development process. In addition, the board provides not only the standalone evaluation of the FCRAM by using a memory controller design but also the evaluation on massive applications by connecting TED's inrevium TB-5V-LX330-EX LSI prototype evaluation board. As an accessory, the board also provides a reference design (VerilogHDL) of DFI (DDR PHY Interface) compatible FCRAM memory controller, enables to implement the FCRAM interface easily and seamless migration to SoC.

TB-OP-FCRAM main features: --FPGA: Xilinx XC5VLX50-1FFG676C --FCRAM: Fujitsu Microelectronics MB81EDS256545 (1M words x 64 bits x 4 banks) --Power supply: Linear Technology LTM4606, LTM4615 --Optional expansion I/O: 2x Samtec 120-pin connectors --Planned reference designs: FCRAM PHY design with DFI support (Verilog HDL) DVI interface design (used to connect to TB-5V-LX330-EX)

Pricing and Availability

The inrevium TB-OP-FCRAM is available now, with a price at US$2,980 and available through TED's worldwide distribution partners, HiTech Global Distribution, LLC and Nu Horizons Electronics Corp.

For more product information, visit at:

http://www.inrevium.jp/eng/x-fpga-board/fcram.html

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Additional Information:

-- 256Mbit FCRAM (Fujitsu Microelectronics Limited)

http://www.fujitsu.com/global/services/microelectronics/product /memory/fcram/index_p3.html

-- Virtex-5 FPGA (Xilinx, Inc.)

http://www.xilinx.com/products/silicon_solutions/fpgas/virtex /virtex5/index.htm

About Tokyo Electron Device

Tokyo Electron Device is an affiliate of Tokyo Electron Limited, one of the world's leading semiconductor manufacturing equipment suppliers. TED has sold its technology as a specialized electronics trading company inside Japan about 40 years, and now the company is applying its knowledge, technology and service capability to establish its inrevium product line in the global industrial market. For more information on inrevium products, visit the website at www.inrevium.jp/eng/.

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Source: Business Wire

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