Endurance (NVRAM)

Endurance (engl. F. Stamina, endurance ) is a term used in microelectronics , especially the technology of NVRAM , so non-volatile data storage : the number of erase / program cycles without memory - functional noticeable - degradation tolerate its storage properties, shortly : the maximum permissible (guaranteed by the manufacturer) number of rewrite operations per memory cell. Typical values ​​range from approx. 1000 for NVRAMs with high data retention requirements to 100,000 for commercially used products (for example in memory cards ).

The fact that this number is limited at all is due to today's flash memories (the current technology for implementing the NVRAM principle) that the memory cells are exposed to high voltages (10-18 V) for the programming and erasing operations, which causes damage to the Structure of the cell occur. The damage becomes less, the lower the voltages for programming and erasing can be selected. This minimization requirement means that a central insulation structure in the memory cell should be made as thin as possible. However, this in turn has negative effects on another parameter of NVRAM, retention .