Another new section starting today- part of the week. There are many other “chip of the week” out there, so here I’ll just mention things that I personally find interesting . They may be chips, or other electronics parts. Today’s find is an Atmel  AT24MAC402/AT24MAC602 – an I2C 2K EEPROM with a stored and read-only  48 or 64 bit EUI address and a unique 128 bit serial number. The parts are very cheap (25 cents)  and serve a very useful role. Say your company is making a product that uses Ethernet. Typically an EEPROM on board is programmed with the MAC (EUI-48)  address during board test. By simply switching to these chips, a step in manufacturing is omitted, saving time and money. Atmel also thought about companies who would like the MAC address be from their own pool of numbers- they would custom preprogram them as a special order. Overall, a pretty simple idea that will save customers time and money!