Lowest power non volatile memory? (Fastest Read/Write)

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Hi

Can someone please tell me what is the non volatile memory with the lowest power consumption ?

Also what is the non-volatile memory which has the fastest write and read times?

Thank you in advance
Regards
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[Ttelmah]

Not as easy as you may think...
CMOS SRAM, combined with an external battery, is probably the lowest power to the outside 'device', since when idle, the power is sourced from it's battery. The power needed to drive it in use, will vary with frequency.
For the truly 'non volatile' systems, I think FRAM is probably the winner.
For most of the smaller variants, the I/O speed is limited by the interface, rather than the memory (so perhaps 8uSec for I2C, at 1MHz). However the bytewide versions, support 70nSec access time. Power consumption depends on the clock speed used on the interface, with 200uA typical at 100KHz for the 256Kb unit, during operation, and 1uA typical 'idle'.

Best Wishes

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Hi Ttelmah

Thank you for your reply.
Can you please give me examples for actual part numbers for what you talk about? (SRAM, FRAM and the very fast writting non-voltaile memory chips?)
This way I can look up their spec sheets.

Our project is all about minimizing power consumption, especially in writting to memory, and prolonging battery life.

Regards
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[Ttelmah]

The original source for FRAM, is Ramtron www.ramtron.com.
Fujitsu, and a number of other companies now make/use it.
Basically, it is a ferromagnetic memory technology (based on some work at IBM a few years ago), which in the 'standard' versions, is pin compatible with EEPROM, but offers immediate writes (no delays), and 45 year predicted storage life
Several people on this group, use, and 'swear by' these memories for faster external storage, the commonest versions being used, are probably the I2C interface units FM24Cxx, where the 'xx' is the size, just like an EEPROM (FM24C256, for a 256Kb unit for example). However there are also parallel interface modules (but a lot larger), and also serial versions with 'extras' (serial numbering, built in RTC etc.).
A search on the group should have found some of the earlier references to it, and a google search will find the versions now available.

Best Wishes