acquisitionZONE Products for the week of July 21, 2003
TelASIC Communications, developer of RF, analog, mixed signal, and digital ICs for advanced wireless applications, followed up its recent introduction of the TC2401, the industry's highest performing 14-bit digital-to-analog converter (DAC), with the announcement of the TC1410. Based on IBM's advanced silicon germanium (SiGe) process technology, the TC1410 is a 14-bit, 240 mega samples per second (MSPS) analog-to-digital converter (ADC) that delivers the highest sampling rate for a 14-bit ADC available today. This exceptional performance provides significant benefits to developers of a variety of applications, including both wireless and wired communications equipment, automated test equipment, high-performance oscilloscopes, spectrum analyzers, and other applications requiring high sampling speed coupled with high dynamic range performance.
"The delivery of two market-leading products within a month confirms TelASIC's value proposition as a proven producer of the highest-performing data conversion technology," said Tony Giraudo, TelASIC's president and CEO. "Our experienced team and rich portfolio of patented intellectual property continues to provide significant overall benefits to customers who implement our data converters."
The TC1410 is a monolithic, multi-stage, sub-ranging 14-bit A/D converter
that includes integrated sample-and-hold, precision voltage reference, quantizing
elements, and error correction circuitry to achieve 240 MSPS sampling rate
with unmatched performance. With greater than 1GHz of input bandwidth, the
TC1410 has the capability to sample high intermediate frequency signals
and deliver superior levels of dynamic range and extremely low clock jitter.
Exceptional dynamic range is demonstrated by a signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)
of 71dB when sampling a 5 MHz signal at 240 MSPS, with total harmonic distortion
(THD) of 87 dBc and spurious-free dynamic range (SFDR) of 88 dBc. When sampling
a 181 MHz signal at 240 MSPS, the TC1410 exhibits SNR of 70 dB, THD of 74
dBc, and an SFDR of 78 dBc.
analogZONE Says . . .
Just a few weeks after releasing the TC2401, the "fastest monolithic 14-bit DAC," TelASIC comes out with the "fastest monolithic 14-bit ADC," more than doubling the throughput of the previous fastest product.
The data sheet is still in a very preliminary state but one number jumps out, which is the power dissipation quoted at a typical 13 W! If this number is correct it is nearly ten times the dissipation of ADI's 105 Msample/s AD6645-105. It is also a dual-rail product, and those two things eliminate it from any portable application and, possibly, from some airborne applications.
With this sort of high-end product the data numbers are not really important until you drop the product into your circuit and start measuring how it really performs for you. The data sheet numbers for SNR look OK although one would have hoped for better with a SiGe process, while the distortion numbers look very good. I cannot read the FFT plots included in the data sheet.
The 1.5 GHz input bandwidth to the sample-and-hold opens up a number of direct uses in RF work, many of which the company doesn't mention. Among the more profitable arenas are radar and infrared imaging, multi-channel multi-mode receivers, and antenna array processing.
The TC1410 is a multi-stage pipeline like architecture with on-chip reference and requiring an external clock. There does not appear to be a way to overdrive the internal reference from an external source which some designers would need. The output is a parallel interface as LVDS signals -- not surprising at these speeds -- and includes a data valid and saturation bit.
With a 100 ohm differential input the company is obviously going after the RF market rather more than instrumentation and ATE, although there are obviously sockets there to be taken.
The TC1410 is sampling in a BGA-256. No pricing was disclosed but I would expect the 500 unit price to be around $95 to get attention.
A preliminary data sheet is available on request from the company.