AMD Offers The Highest-Density 1.8 Volt-Only Flash Device

AMD Adds 16-Megabit Device to Industry's only Family of 1.8-Volt Flash Devices

SUNNYVALE, CA -- 3/29/1999 -- AMD today introduced announced the Am29SL160C, the industry's first 1.8 Volt-only, 16-megabit flash memory device. As the newest addition to AMD's super low voltage flash family, this device offers high performance with read access times as fast as 100 nanoseconds.

"The new Am29SL160C represents a significant milestone in AMD's low-voltage strategy," said Walid Maghribi, group vice president of AMD's Memory Group. "By combining 16-megabits with 1.8-volt technology, we help system designers meet stringent power constraints, while increasing the functionality of existing and future generations of portable devices."

The Am29SL160C features AMD's advanced power-management system, which conserves power by automatically putting the flash device into sleep mode during inactive periods, consuming virtually zero power. There is no latency/wake-up time when the system subsequently accesses the device.

In addition to super low power consumption, the Am29SL160C offers three value-added features, requested by system manufacturers: electronic serialization; accelerated programming mode; and hardware write protection. Electronic serialization provides unique identification to prevent equipment cloning. Accelerated programming increases factory throughput by 50 percent, while hardware write protection prevents inadvertent code modification during power transitions.

Applications
The Am29SL160C is an ideal solution for embedded handheld applications such as digital cellular handsets manufacturers, personal information devices (PIDs), global positioning systems (GPS), and pagers. These applications require low power consumption, long battery life, high performance, increased functionality and small form-factor packaging. By reducing the power consumption to one-third that of comparable 16-megabit 3.0-Volt devices, the Am29SL160C enables manufacturers to offer more feature-rich products with extended battery life.

Price, Package and Availability
The Am29SL160C is available now for samples in a 48-pin TSOP and a 48-ball Fine Pitch BGA. FBGA provides the most reliable, least expensive chip-scale package solution for flash memory. In order to provide an easy migration path, the Am29SL160C is pin-compatible with the 8-megabit Am29SL800C and existing AMD 3.0-Volt and 5.0-Volt devices. The device is $8.50 in 10,000-piece quantities.