Ramtron Begins Commercial Sampling of MaxArias Wireless Memory

“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 is ideal 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. For more information about MaxArias wireless memory, a white paper and datasheets are available at www.ramtron.com/go/maxarias. For a 300-dpi product photo, visit www.ramtron.com/press-center/image-bank.aspx (see MaxArias Wireless Memory).