• Re: FRAM

    From Paul Rubin@21:1/5 to Paul Rubin on Wed Apr 13 13:02:19 2022
    Paul Rubin <no.email@nospam.invalid> writes:
    Here is an Adafruit SPI FRAM breakout board, on the expensive side at 10
    USD for 64KB: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1895

    Oops, that one is 32KB not 64KB. They also have 8KB ( https://www.adafruit.com/product/1897 , $6), 256KB ( https://www.adafruit.com/product/4718 , $13), and 512KB ( https://www.adafruit.com/product/4719 , $18).

    I guess these are useful for some purposes, though today's cpus often
    have some very low powered backup SRAM, that can retain data in the
    lowest powered sleep modes, that consume a tiny amount of battery power.

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  • From Paul Rubin@21:1/5 to Anton Ertl on Wed Apr 13 12:46:19 2022
    anton@mips.complang.tuwien.ac.at (Anton Ertl) writes:
    It still seems to be available: <https://www.mouser.de/ProductDetail/Texas-Instruments/MSP-EXP430FR5969?qs=FBI%252BX3tnPf0g8H7ws5NtfA%3D%3D>

    23 immediately available (but you can only buy up to 3), and more from
    the manufacturer. It's not cheap, though.

    That is a pretty fancy board with 128K of FRAM, and it says 19.36 euro
    which includes an alphanumeric LCD display iirc. IIRC There was a less expensive board (10 or so euro?) with 64K of FRAM and without the LCD.
    And of course you can buy the cpu chip by itself: I think that fancy one
    is around 7 euro. Idk about the lower models.

    Yes TI said something about the MSP430 FRAM parts using a special fab
    process that wouldn't work with ARM cores. I think the MSP430 itself is
    now something of a legacy architecture. It was nice in many ways, but
    nobody wants 16 bit cpus any more. A pity. Maybe they can make a
    RISC-V series using the FRAM-friendly fab process.

    Here is an Adafruit SPI FRAM breakout board, on the expensive side at 10
    USD for 64KB: https://www.adafruit.com/product/1895

    They also have larger and smaller ones. I expect that the bare chips
    are somewhat less expensive than those boards, since the boards are
    retail products.

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