Entering the smart water/gas market, Fujitsu FRAM is another city

In the metering industry, the water meter/gas meter is still a “blue ocean” market different from the meter. The sensitivity to cost is much lower than the sensitivity to power consumption. It is because of this feature that FRAM is a batteryless battery. Storage technology is gaining more and more applications in both communication units (relays) and metering units.

At the recent 2015 WATER/GAS METERING China2015 held in Shenzhen, Fujitsu Semiconductor's booth was crowded, and the industry's attention to this new storage technology is evident. FRAM's success in the field of electricity meters is very good. It will soon be extended to a battery to use 10-15 years of water / gas meter, and even more than that.

Entering the smart water/gas market, Fujitsu FRAM is another city

Cai Zhenyu, head of Fujitsu's FRAM products in China and senior manager of the marketing department, further analyzed the factors: compared with the intelligence of the meter, the electronic and intelligent water meter/gas meter is still in its infancy, so the market space is huge. In order to build a water-saving society, the relevant state departments have clearly stated that water supply should fully implement the ladder charge. The promotion of water meter reform will quickly promote the application of electronic components such as data storage in water meters/gas meters; in addition, the demographic dividend disappears and the labor force Increasing costs are driving the deployment of remote meter reading systems. The degree of intelligence of water meters/gas meters must also be mentioned constantly. This will also drive the application of memory, especially long read and write life and low power consumption. The useful life of FRAM will be of great use.

As an important sponsor of this forum, Fujitsu Semiconductor has not only exhibited FRAM product solutions and demonstration boards for water meters/gas meters and industrial applications, but also the latest power and signal relay product series. The wonderful speech of "Fujitsu Ferroelectric Application in Flowmeter" deeply analyzed the advantages and application cases of FRAM relative to EEPROM and Flash.

Entering the smart water/gas market, Fujitsu FRAM is another city

Subversion of non-volatile memory

As a non-volatile memory, FRAM has a high-speed write speed close to the level of traditional volatile memory such as SRAM and DRAM. The read/write cycle is 1/30,000 of that of conventional non-volatile memory, but the read/write durability is It is 10 million times that of the latter, reaching 10 trillion times, enabling high-frequency data records (real-time records).

Entering the smart water/gas market, Fujitsu FRAM is another city

"Equivalent to writing from the Tang Dynasty to the present!" Cai Zhenyu vividly described the read and write durability of FRAM in the speech. If the calculation is based on a read/write frequency of 5ms, the time spent on 10 trillion times is 1,585 years. . EEPROM has only 1 million read and write lifes. If you read and write the frequency, it will be scrapped in one and a half hours, let alone Flash with only 100,000 read and write lives. In addition, FRAM's data retention time is extremely long, and it can be at least 10 years at 85 °C.

Entering the smart water/gas market, Fujitsu FRAM is another city

"Someone might mention that EEPROM/Flash can be partitioned to read and write to improve life, that is, wear leveling," Cai Zhenyu also analyzed. "But this will put more demands on software redundancy. And take up more CPU (MCU) working time, which will increase the system power consumption, especially for battery-powered metering applications such as water meter / gas meter. Without the need for wear leveling FRAM can realize the small capacity of the memory, reduce the software The complexity and complexity of bugs, the chances of engineers making mistakes are reduced, and the reliability of the entire system is improved.” He also mentioned that whether it is battery-powered or circuit-powered, after using FRAM, even when power is off Large capacitors are not required when data write operations are required.

When it comes to the power consumption of the device itself, FRAM shows the "smart" side, the EEPROM/Flash read and write cycle is long, the power consumption is particularly high during erasing, and the FRAM read and write cycle is short, so the power consumption level is only about 1 EEPROM. /300, 1/100,000 of Flash.

“If there is no way for the water meter/gas meter to reduce power consumption from the perspective of the MCU, then consider converting the memory type to help reduce the overall system power consumption.” Cai Zhenyu suggested to the industry insiders. Moreover, if EEPROM or Flash is used, if power interruption occurs during long data writing, data is lost, and FRAM does not have this risk, so even when data is written, even when data write operation is required No large capacitors are needed.

Entering the smart water/gas market, Fujitsu FRAM is another city

At the exhibition site of this forum, Fujitsu Semiconductor demonstrated the advantages of FRAM's high-speed reading and writing and reliable data storage by taking pictures, and reflected the huge difference in power consumption by turning on the brightness of one LED.

Entering the smart water/gas market, Fujitsu FRAM is another city
Entering the smart water/gas market, Fujitsu FRAM is another city

In addition, Cai Zhenyu also emphasized in his speech that Fujitsu Semiconductor's FRAM is the same as the EEPROM package, the pins are also fully compatible, the functions are also compatible, the various interfaces are common (I2C, SPI and parallel port), the protocol is compatible, and the alternative is used. There are no obstacles.

Entering the smart water/gas market, Fujitsu FRAM is another city

Medium and external application examples in the flowmeter

FRAM has a wide range of applications, including Fujitsu FRAM smart cards, power meters (three-phase meters and concentrators), industrial controls, office equipment, car audio navigation instruments, game consoles, RFID, medical devices and medical electronic tags in China over the past few years. The industry has taken the lead in achieving gratifying results and getting high-volume applications. As shown in the following figure, Fujitsu's FRAM has entered the water and gas meter market for nearly two years. What is the progress? According to Cai Zhenyu, although the overall economic environment is relatively weak, it does not prevent the intelligent process of water meter. The demand for FRAM grows steadily, and Fujitsu FRAM's revenue growth in this area has reached 30%.

Entering the smart water/gas market, Fujitsu FRAM is another city

He further pointed out: "China's water meter manufacturers/programmers are concentrated in Jiangsu, Zhejiang, Chongqing and other places. Many people have begun to use FRAM for research and development of new products, while centralized meter reading module manufacturers and developers are mostly in South China. They also have a strong interest in FRAM, and some new project developments are already starting to adopt FRAM."

Like power meters, Fujitsu FRAM is becoming the best solution for water/gas meters and their collection systems. As shown in the figure below, in the water meter/gas meter system, the FRAM can be seen from the concentrator to the water meter/gas meter terminal of each household. In the concentrator, FRAM is used to store communication history data, while in gas meter applications, FRAM is used to store gas flow history data. In water meter applications, FRAM is used to store water flow history data.

Entering the smart water/gas market, Fujitsu FRAM is another city

Cai Zhenyu said: "The battery life problem is the key to a battery-powered water meter / gas meter. The battery inside takes 10-15 years. The low-power Fujitsu semiconductor FRAM itself has relatively low power consumption. Fujitsu FRAM's high-speed read and write performance will greatly shorten the microprocessor calculation state and extend its standby state, thus further extending battery life!"

Entering the smart water/gas market, Fujitsu FRAM is another city

As shown in the above figure, under the same conditions (component capacity is 16Kbit, power consumption includes standby current), EEPROM consumes up to 500mAh, while FRAM consumes only 10mAh, which is only 1/50 of the former. !

"The performance advantages of FRAM are obvious, but the quality of storage products is another factor that customers value very much." Cai Zhenyu concluded, "Fujitsu Semiconductor has used mature technology to produce FRAM for more than 10 years. We have been in 1999. Started mass production, and has accumulated sales of 2.58 billion FRAM products in 15 years. High reliability, complete supply system, and grand business vision are our commitment to customers."

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