I use eeprom in Atmega chip to record some data and I wonder what will happen after reach eeprom's life,
the chip still work but can not record any data or the chip just stop working?
Thanks in advance,
The processor will carry on working, but you won't be able to rely on any values read from EEPROM.
That's unlikely to happen unless you get in some kind of loop that writes to the same address continually, for 100,000+ times.
A write cycle takes 3.3mS, so you'd have to be writing the same address for over 5.5 Minutes. Hopefully you'd something odd about your program before then 8)
Thanks you so much for the response,
I need to know this in order to evaluate lifetime of my project.
Another question I would like to know is
What is the normal lifetime of an arduino board?
I means if I use it in normal condition, will it work for 3-5 years?
Long time. No moving parts.
If you are not overstressing the outputs or running the voltage regulator from excessive voltage, no reason it should fail.
I have 15 running at my fencing club, powered up 4 times a week for a couple hours at a time since Dec 2010. No problems.
Others have them running 24 hours a day.
3-5 years should not be a problem.
The Arduino (Diecimila) running the status LCD in my home server, and it's peripheral parts have been running close to 24/7 for the last 3 years. I find that in general the only things that causes problems over time are program flaws, and running the hardware out of spec.