Since the internal flash of a Renesas R8C/M16C/M32C microcontroller can be erased and programmed in-circuit, an application has been created in order to eliminate the need for an external EEPROM in a target system. This Virtual EEPROM implementation as it is called uses the highly erasable/programmable Data flash area that is available on all newer R8C/M16C/M32C MCUs. Specifically, many of these MCUs allow for a minimum 10,000 erase/write cycles of the Data flash blocks.

The “Virtual EEPROM” is a firmware implementation created by Renesas Technology to make use of the high erase/write cycle Data flash block technology. The Virtual EEPROM API developed and described here does not utilize any additional flash hardware in order to implement the Virtual EEPROM feature.