EEPROM Write Limit

Dave Hein

Does writing the same value to a location wear out that location in an EEPROM? Also, does writing the same value take less time than writing a different value?

I have an app that writes data back to an EEPROM, and most of the new data is appended to the old. Occasionally, some of the old data is changed as well. I was thinking that I could just write back all of the data without checking for which locations have changed.

Zap-o

Yes it will wear out.

Writing the same value should be the same as writing a new value.

RAMTRON makes a type of EEPROM that can be written to without wearing out. 1 Trillion.

http://www.ramtron.com/products/nonvolatile-memory/serial-product.aspx?id=128

The 24lc256 states on the first page the write cycles life time 1 million

http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/21203Q.pdf

Dave Hein

OK, thanks for the response. I'm not really too concerned about wearing out the EEPROM since the writes will only be done when a user manually issues a save command. I'll probably implement a read-and-write-if-changed algorithm to speed up the save operation.

Beau Schwabe

The EEPROM used in the Propeller has greater than 1 million write cycles. Basically If you wrote to the EEPROM 100 times a day, in 27 years it would start to fail.