Pronounced
double-ee-prom or
e-e-prom, short for
electrically erasable programmable read-only memory. EEPROM is a special type of
PROM that can be erased by exposing it to an electrical charge. Like other types of PROM, EEPROM retains its contents even when the power is turned off. Also like other types of
ROM, EEPROM is not as fast as
RAM.
EEPROM is similar to flash memory (sometimes called flash EEPROM). The principal difference is that EEPROM requires data to be written or erased one byte at a time whereas flash memory allows data to be written or erased in blocks. This makes flash memory faster.
