User Guide

1 Page EEPROM cycling performance
1.1 Cycling budget
Page EEPROMs can write data with:
• Page Program operation that needs erased bytes (FFh) to program data
• Page Write operation that is a Page Erased followed by a Page Program operation
For more information about Page Program and Page Write operations refer to the application note AN5747 (Page
EEPROM memory architecture).
Table 2. Glossary
Parameter Definition
Cycle Page write operation (1 to 512 bytes) or erase operation (page, sector, block, or chip erase)
Cycling Cumulated number of cycles
Note: One program operation executed between two erases operations does not count as a cycle.
As specified in the related datasheets, the cycling budget is 500 k per page over the full temperature and supply
voltage ranges which makes page EEPROMs very flexible.
This cycling budget represents the sum of page write and erase operations over a page:
• A page write of 1 byte or a page write of 512 bytes both represent one cycle over the page.
• A page erase of 512 bytes represents one cycle over the page. Whatever the amount of page program
operations.
• A sector erase (4 KB) represents one cycle for each of the 8 pages erased.
• A block erase (64 KB) represents one cycle for each of the 128 pages erased.
• A chip erase represents one cycle for each page of the memory.
The cycling budget of page EEPROM products are easy to calculate and allows byte cycling thanks to the page
write operation. The error correction code (ECC) has no effect on cycling budget.
For more information about ECC refer to the application note AN5747 (Page EEPROM memory architecture)
AN5866
Page EEPROM cycling performance
AN5866 - Rev 1
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