Date: 13th Aug 2010

Ramtron starts commercial sampling of its MaxArias Wireless Memory

Ramtron has made available commercial samples of its F-RAM enabled MaxArias wireless memory devices. Ramtron’s MaxArias wireless memory products combine the low power, high speed, and high endurance features of nonvolatile F-RAM memory technology with industry standard wireless access to enable innovative mobile data collection capabilities. MaxArias is ideal for a wide range of applications such as high-value asset tracking, manufacturing and maintenance history collection, and smart utility metering, among others.

“We have been very pleased with the enthusiastic response that Ramtron’s MaxArias products have generated since their unveiling earlier this year,” said Dan Secrest, Ramtron’s marketing manager for MaxArias products. “The first devices in the MaxArias family offer on-chip, wireless high memory data storage and retrieval at far greater range with lower power than ever before. We believe this new capability will enhance productivity, lower costs, and improve supply chain efficiencies for a host of applications that have not been possible until now.”

Ramtron’s first family of MaxArias wireless memories combines up to 16-Kilobits of high-performance, nonvolatile F-RAM memory with the EPCglobal Class-1 Generation-2 UHF Air Interface Protocol Standard. When combined with an optimized antenna design, the MaxArias device powers up with energy harvested directly from the RF field. Mainstream RFID tags offer only a few kilobits of memory and exhibit inherently slow performance. Ramtron’s introductory MaxArias wireless memory offers up to 1,000 16-bit words of data on the IC. End users can benefit from the high-performance, high-capacity MaxArias device by storing and retrieving their valuable information such as manufacturing data, production number and date, configuration status, malfunctioning history, repair history, and even firmware revisions at a distance of up to 10 meters at very low power (-13dBm/-13dBm read/write sensitivity).

Ramtron’s MaxArias WM710xx family suggested for applications spanning many industries including utilities, aircraft/industrial manufacturing, inventory control, maintenance tracking, building security, electronic toll collection, pharmaceutical tracking, and product authentication, among others.