Intelligent market space lure memory into the field of water and gas

Cai Zhenyu, head of China market for FRAM products and senior manager of the marketing department, further analyzed the following factors: Compared with the smart degree of the meter, the electronic and intelligent meter/gas meter is still in its infancy, so the market space is huge, especially for In building a water-saving society, relevant state departments have clearly proposed that laddering fees should be fully implemented for water use. The implementation of water meter reform will rapidly promote the application of electronic components such as data storage in water meters/gas meters; in addition, the demographic dividend disappears and labor costs continue to increase. The rise is driving the deployment of remote meter reading systems. The degree of intelligence in the water meter/gas meter must also be mentioned. This will also lead to the application of memory. In particular, long read/write life and low power consumption will help prolong battery life. FRAM will have a great deal of use.

Subverting awareness of non-volatile memory

As a non-volatile memory, FRAM has a high-speed writing speed close to that of conventional volatile memory such as SRAM and DRAM. The read/write cycle is 1/30,000 of the conventional non-volatile memory, but the read/write durability is late. It is 10 million times that it reaches 10 trillion times, and it can achieve high frequent data records (real-time records).

"Equivalent to writing from the Tang Dynasty to the present!" Cai Zhenyu described the reading and writing durability of the FRAM in his speech as such. If the reading and writing frequency is calculated at a read rate of 5ms, the time taken to reach 10 trillion times is 1,585 years. EEPROM has only 1 million read and write lifespans. If this read/write frequency is used, it will be scrapped in an hour and a half, not to mention Flash with only 100,000 read/write cycles. In addition, the data retention time of the FRAM is extremely long, and can reach at least 10 years in an environment of 85°C.

“Someone may mention that EEPROM/Flash can be partitioned to operate on reads and writes to improve lifetime, that is, wear leveling,” Cai Zhenyu also analyzed. “But this will put more demands on software redundancy. It also consumes more time for the CPU (MCU), which will increase the power consumption of the system, especially for battery-power metering applications such as water meters/gas meters, and does not require wear leveling FRAM to achieve small-capacity memory and reduce software With the possibility of complications and bugs being mixed in, the chances of engineers making mistakes are also reduced and the reliability of the entire system is improved.” In addition, he mentioned that both the battery-powered and the circuit-powered, with FRAM, even when power is cut off, Large capacitance is also not required when data write operations are required.

"If the water meter/gas meter does not have a way to reduce the power consumption from the MCU point of view, the conversion memory type can be considered again to help reduce the overall system power consumption." Cai Zhenyu suggested to the participants in the forum. Moreover, if EEPROM or Flash is used, if power interruption occurs during long data writing, there is a danger of data being lost, and FRAM will not have this risk. Therefore, even if a data writing operation is required when the power is turned off, No large capacitors are needed.

Middle and outer application examples in the flowmeter

In the past few years, FRAM has made gratifying achievements in China's smart cards, power meters (three-phase meters and concentrators), industrial controls, office equipment, car audio navigation devices, game consoles, RFID, medical devices, and medical electronic tags. The results are applied in large quantities. As shown in the figure below, Fujitsu Semiconductor's FRAM has entered the field of water and gas meters for nearly two years. What is the progress? According to Cai Zhenyu, although the overall economic environment was relatively weak, it did not prevent the smart metering process of the water meter, and the demand for FRAM grew steadily. Fujitsu FRAM's revenue growth in this field reached 30%.

He further pointed out: "China's water meter manufacturers/solutions are concentrated in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Shanghai and Chongqing. Many of them have started to use FRAM to develop new products, and centralized meter reading module manufacturers and developers are mostly located in South China. They also have a strong interest in FRAM, and some new projects have already begun to adopt FRAM."

Like power meters, Fujitsu's FRAM is becoming the best solution for water meter/gas meters and their collection and copying systems. In the water meter/gas meter system, the FRAM can be seen from the concentrator to each household meter/gas meter terminal. In the concentrator, FRAM is used to store communication history data. In the gas meter application, FRAM is used to store gas flow historical data. In the water meter application, FRAM is used to store water flow historical data.