Embedded applications that use a 32-bit microcontroller are increasingly tasked with offering a range of sophisticated features for managing multimedia, photos, and other data-intensive content. This is particularly true of systems that present a human interface, since users have come to expect a graphical display that lets them interact with window boxes, photos, animations, sound files, and more. Also, as products become increasingly international, they must be able to operate in different languages and may need to support several sets of alphabets and non-Roman characters. All these requirements place extra demands on the system memory resources. Most 32-bit microcontrollers are equipped with a certain amount of on-chip Flash memory that can be used to support data-intensive features, but it is often not enough to support the entire application. The on-chip Flash is typically limited to 1 Mb or less. That may be enough to house the bulk of the critical application code, but it may fall short when it comes to storing all the other items the application needs, such as look-up tables, images, photos, sound files, multiple languages, and so on. For these items, designers often turn to external Flash memory because it is significantly less expensive than on-chip Flash and is readily available in sizes in excess of 8Mb.