Fujitsu today announced the availability of its 2 Mbit Ferroelectric RAM (FRAM or FeRAM) memory chips, which the company claims is the largest capacity FRAM in volume production in the world. The memory product have the same electrical characteristics and use the same TSOP-48 package as Fujitsu's 1 Mbit FRAM products, equating to double the capacity over previous chips. Sampling price of the chips is set at 2,000 Yen ($16.91 USD).

FRAM is a non-volatile memory that uses a ferroelectric film as the capacitor for data retention and betters flash-based RAM with faster data writing, lower power consumption and higher number of write cycles.

Fujitsu says that FRAM could be used in office equipment to store event counts, or store various parameters and log at every event, without concern for the number of write cycles.  FRAM allows 10 billion read/write cycles, which corresponds to writing 30 times a second continuously for 10 years. Also, FRAM can store data for more than 10 years without a battery.

Other ideal uses of FRAM could be in car navigation systems, multi-function printers, measuring instruments – anywhere non-volatile memory is being used to store various parameters, record operating conditions of equipment or security information.