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Flash memory endurance

mbadanai
Associate II
Posted on September 24, 2009 at 17:44

Flash memory endurance

3 REPLIES 3
mbadanai
Associate II
Posted on May 17, 2011 at 13:24

I'm using STM32F103ZE and i've read from datasheet that the flash endurance cycles is 10Kcycles! It seems to me to be very few compared with other micro (normal is 100Kcycle)...could be a datasheet error?

danish
Associate II
Posted on May 17, 2011 at 13:24

Although it could be a datasheet error, flash endurance is one of the many compromises that must be made when designing a microcontroller.

In order to improve endurance, one would probably need larger memory cells leading to bigger chips and higher prices.

I am pretty certain that some competitors improve the effective endurance of the memory by error-correction-coding, but that slows down memory access so it costs MHz!

And another competitor came out with devices where the specified endurance was only 1000 cycles!

But thinking about it, even with crash-and-burn software development, one is not likely to reach 1000 programming cycles.

It is only when one is using the Flash for data logging that one might feel constrained. But even here there are techniques which reduce the number of times a particular memory location needs to be written in exchange for vastly increasing the memory allocated to storing the information.

- Danish

tomas23
Associate II
Posted on May 17, 2011 at 13:24

The 10k cycles are guaranteed after 20 years at 85 deg.C. Not bad, is it?

Btw. there is somewhere an AN describing wear and tear algo for EEPROM emulation (AN2594).