I2C EEPROM endurance

Question

I am using an AT24C32 I2C EEPROM device as a simple storage unit for recording slow analog voltages. I am writing the data byte-wise, no pages. Every write cycle takes 10ms to complete. The data sheets state an endurance of 1M write cycles.

I would like to know if this figure relates to a single cell or for every single write? Eg, if I completely fill up the EEPROM-memory (4096 bytes) with byte write commands, do I consume 4096 cycles, or only one (as every single cell is only written to once)?

Answer 1

The endurance is in write cycles for one cell.

If you fill the 4096 byte EEPROM once, you still have 999999 write cycles left for each cell.

If you (over)write the same byte 4096 times, you have 995904 write cycle left for that particular byte and full 1000000 for each of the rest of 4095 bytes.