Spansion's product portfolio offers NOR densities ranging from four-megabit to eight-gigabits, NAND densities ranging from one-gigabit to eight-gigabits and an array of interfaces and features. It has developed two flash memory technologies, single-bit-per-cell floating gate technology and one-, two- or more-bit-per-cell MirrorBit technology, with MirrorBit products based on two-bits per cell and allowing offering a range of product configurations. The Company's products based on NOR flash memory architecture are designed for code storage and execution, and utilize either traditional floating gate technology or its MirrorBit technology.
Spansion's NOR and NAND offering was targeted at embedded applications such as automotive, industrial and telecommunications.
Spansion concentrated on the embedded electronics market. Its Floating Gate and MirrorBit technology was used to make networking and telecommunications equipment, consumer electronics, gaming equipment, TV set-top control boxes, automotive equipment and personal computer peripherals.
The company's NOR products offer designers the option to choose from 5V, 3V and 1.8V products that range from 1Mb to 2Gb.NAND products offer 3V and 1.8V products that range from 1Gb to 8 Gb.
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Spansion's standard parallel NOR flash includes Spansion's MirrorBit NOR GL, AL AS, CD-CL, F, JL, PL, NS/VS/XS and WS families of flash memory. The products operate anywhere at 1.8 to 5.0 volts (Vcc), feature a random read speed of 90-100 nanoseconds (ns) access and offer a page read speed of 25 ns via an 8-word page buffer.
Spansion's serial peripheral interface (SPI) devices read information serially, or one bit at a time, requiring fewer connections and pins, allowing for lower costs and simplified board layouts. Serial flash memory is used in applications such as high-end printers, FPGAs, networking equipment and set-top boxes.
The Spansion SPI FL family of serial flash memory: Densities for the SPI flash memory devices range from 4 Mb to 1 Gb with uniform 4KB uniform 64KB and uniform 256KB (128Mb – 1Gb FL-S) sectors and 4 Mb with parameter sectors.
Spansion developed the HyperFlash NOR memory devices, based on the HyperBus interface. The family features read throughput of up to 333 megabytes per second—more than five times faster than ordinary Quad SPI flash currently available with one-third the number of pins of parallel NOR flash. Spansion HyperFlash memory devices provide a migration path—from single Quad SPI to Dual Quad SPI to HyperFlash Memory—allowing system applications to be scaled to different levels of flash performance when paired with compatible controllers, giving OEMs the ability to offer different product models with a single design.
In August 2011, Spansion announced that it had created the first single-die, 4-gigabit NOR product implemented at the 65-nm node.
In 2013 Spansion acquired the Fujitsu microcontroller and analog business, including 8- 16- and 32-bit microcontroller families.
Spansion's FM MCU microcontroller family, which was based on the ARM Cortex-M4, M3, M0+ CPUs comes in packages from 32 to 216 pins, with flash memory densities between 56KB and 2MB. The Spansion Traveo microcontrollers are based on the ARM Cortex-R5 core and the first series in the Traveo family, MB9D560, operate at 200 MHz.
Spansion also acquired power management ICs aimed at energy harvesting and LED lighting. The Buck PMIC for solar and vibrations energy harvesting MB39C811regulates output voltage with the quiescent current of 1.5 μA. The Boost PMIC for solar and thermal energy harvesting MB39C831. Spansion's Easy DesignSim was a comprehensive online design support tool for LED Driver Circuit designers.
Manufacturing
Spansion had its headquarters in Sunnyvale, California. The company's main wafer fabrication facility, known as Fab 25, was in Austin, Texas. The company also operated a final-manufacturing facility, in Bangkok, Thailand. In Penang, Malaysia, the company had a design center to focus on providing design, layout, CAD and verification services and to support to cross-site design centers.
