For an application I need to store a large amount of data (ca. 3MB). A
serial flash could be a good idea (I don't need to erase very often,
and if I erase, I will erase all the data at once).

I found Atmel's products. But there is a problem: Atmel produces 2
types of serial flash: Serial Flash and DataFlash(r).
What's the difference?

Any other suggestion (producer, kind of memory,...) are welcome :)

Thanks Bye Jack

PS: the clock freq. is not important, I will command the flash using a
Freescale 9S08QE8 (via SPI bus).

On Jul 2, 8:32 am, Jack <jack4...@gmail.com> wrote:
> For an application I need to store a large amount of data (ca. 3MB). A
> serial flash could be a good idea (I don't need to erase very often,
> and if I erase, I will erase all the data at once).
>
> I found Atmel's products. But there is a problem: Atmel produces 2
> types of serial flash: Serial Flash and DataFlash(r).
> What's the difference?

I don't know what the difference is, but you might shop by what is
available in the size you need, and then decide if it will do the
job.  When I look at what I could have on my desk tomorrow from
Digikey, Atmel's offerings in your size range (I assume you mean Bytes
not bits) are from their dataflash series only.

On Jul 2, 5:32 am, Jack <jack4...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I found Atmel's products. But there is a problem: Atmel produces 2
> types of serial flash: Serial Flash and DataFlash(r).
> What's the difference?

=46rom <http://www.atmel.com/products/SFlash/default.asp>;
  Four serial Flash families to meet all of your needs

  The AT25Fxxx, AT25FSxxx and AT25DF/26xxx series of products are
pin    compatible to our complete offering of SPI serial EEPROMs. This
gives you the flexibility of increasing your memory size from a low-
density serial EEPROM device to a serial Flash without any changes to
your board layout.

  The full-featured AT45DBxxx DataFlash=AE family is taking SPI serial
Flash to the next level. Advanced features to further enable system
integration, robustness and cost reduction include a 128-byte security
register, individual sector protection, and a permanent lockdown
feature. This popular page erase architecture allows key software
routines, parameters and user data to be stored more efficiently, so
that more memory space isn't wasted by allocating large sectors for
different types of code or data.

Alan Nishioka

On Jul 2, 10:07=A0am, cs_post...@hotmail.com wrote:
> On Jul 2, 8:32 am, Jack <jack4...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > For an application I need to store a large amount of data (ca. 3MB). A
> > serial flash could be a good idea (I don't need to erase very often,
> > and if I erase, I will erase all the data at once).
>
> > I found Atmel's products. But there is a problem: Atmel produces 2
> > types of serial flash: Serial Flash and DataFlash(r).
> > What's the difference?
>
> I don't know what the difference is, but you might shop by what is
> available in the size you need, and then decide if it will do the
> job. =A0When I look at what I could have on my desk tomorrow from
> Digikey, Atmel's offerings in your size range (I assume you mean Bytes
> not bits) are from their dataflash series only.

"DataFlash is a low pin-count serial interface for flash memory. It is
an Atmel proprietary interface, compatible with the SPI standard." as
per Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DataFlash

Serial flash conforms to an industry standard serial interface
protocol (SPI).

Serial flash implies the same product is available in the same
packaging as other manufacturers products of a similar configuration
and memory size (This is implied but in reality it is not always the
case). You really need to read the data sheets, to determine which is
more appropriate to your needs. However if your implementation is more
general purpose, choose the component that fits the memory
requirements and design the interface accordingly.

Jack a écrit :

> I found Atmel's products. But there is a problem: Atmel produces 2
> types of serial flash: Serial Flash and DataFlash(r).
> What's the difference?

Hi,

There are actually 4 series:
http://www.atmel.com/products/SFlash/default.asp

If you write the whole data at once, you can use any.

> Any other suggestion (producer, kind of memory,...) are welcome :)

ST (now known as Numonyx) -> M25Pxx, M25PExx, M25PXxx, M45PExx
Winbond W25Xxx
Macronix M25Lxx
AMIC A25L0xx
SST 25VFxxx, 26VFxxx
Spansion S25FLxxx

For 3 MB, you need at least 24 Mbits, so you must choose a 32 Mbits part.

-- 
Stephane

Jack wrote:

> For an application I need to store a large amount of data (ca. 3MB). A
> serial flash could be a good idea (I don't need to erase very often,
> and if I erase, I will erase all the data at once).
> 
> I found Atmel's products. But there is a problem: Atmel produces 2
> types of serial flash: Serial Flash and DataFlash(r).
> What's the difference?
> 
> Any other suggestion (producer, kind of memory,...) are welcome :)

Winbond has some cheap and big serial flash ICs:

http://search.digikey.com/scripts/DkSearch/dksus.dll?Detail?name=W25X32VSSIG-ND

I don't know if this will be produced any longer, because Digikey says the
stock won't be filled when depleted, but there are some pin compatible
parts from other manufactures, too, like STMicroelectronics, or this one:

http://uk.farnell.com/1099666/ics-quarze/product.us0?sku=numonyx-m25p32-vme6g

I think DataFlash has some more features, like smaller block size when
programming, but is available from Atmel, only.

-- 
Frank Buss, f...@frank-buss.de
http://www.frank-buss.de, http://www.it4-systems.de

Jack wrote:
> For an application I need to store a large amount of data (ca. 3MB). A
> serial flash could be a good idea (I don't need to erase very often,
> and if I erase, I will erase all the data at once).
> 
> I found Atmel's products. But there is a problem: Atmel produces 2
> types of serial flash: Serial Flash and DataFlash(r).
> What's the difference?

Branding. Older Atmel DataFlash was different, it had a ping-pong
RAM buffer, so you could stream to it continually.
Now I think they call more memory DataFlash

See
http://www.atmel.com/products/SFlash/default.asp

AT45DBxx is the family with RAM buffers
AT25DF is more conventional SPI Flash memory

> Any other suggestion (producer, kind of memory,...) are welcome :)

Lots of companies make SPI flash, and there are also SD cards,
if you need a removable memory.

-jg