acquisitionZONE Products for the week of September 9, 2002
Anadigm's proprietary FPAA technology brings the industry an analog equivalent to the FPGA, allowing complex analog signal conditioning and processing functions to be integrated within an off-the-shelf, pre-tested device.
The new AN220E04 makes its debut as the silicon component of Anadigmvortex, a second-generation product family that combines a powerful EDA tool, configurable analog modules (CAMs), and programmable silicon to reduce the time required for analog design implementations from months to minutes.
In addition to enabling a short analog design and implementation cycle, the functionality of the AN220E04 can be reconfigured in-system by the designer or on the fly by a microprocessor. A single AN220E04 can thus be programmed to implement multiple analog functions and/or to adapt on-the-fly to maintain precision operation despite system degradation and aging.
The AN220E04 will be used to replace discrete components and analog ASIC/ASSP devices for signal conditioning, filtering, data acquisition, closed-loop control, and other analog applications in a wide range of industrial, automotive, medical, communications, automatic test equipment, and instrumentation systems.
"Anadigm's flexible analog signal processing technology complements digital signal processing technology and the AN220E04 can be useful in conjunction with DSP chips and can even replace DSPs in specific audio applications." said Will Strauss, president of DSP market watcher Forward Concepts.
Based on a fully differential switched capacitor technology with an analog switch fabric, the second-generation AN220E04 has been redesigned to boost device functionality and performance. Compared with Anadigm's first-generation FPAAs, the AN220E04 architecture provides a significantly improved signal-to-noise ratio as well as higher bandwidth. A successive approximation register-based A/D converter can be combined with an on-board look-up table to provide advanced analog functions including sensor response linearization, arbitrary waveform synthesis, signal-dependent functions, analog multiplication and signal companding.
Until now, analog functionality within a system could be changed only by developing a new system board with new discrete values. With the Anadigmvortex family, these functions can interact with other parts of the system through software, putting analog under the absolute control of the system processor. The benefits to manufacturers are numerous. Examples include the ability to adapt the system for sensor degradation, laser aging, or changing customer requirements; increased system functionality; and the ability to improve accuracy in end products.
"Our first-generation FPAAs created an entirely new paradigm for
analog design by allowing even non-specialists to design and implement complex
analog circuits in a fraction of the time required by designers using discrete
components or analog ASICs," said Mike Kay, Anadigm president and CEO.
"With the dynamic reconfigurability introduced by the Anadigmvortex
family, the comparative benefits of FPAAs become even more dramatic, not
only for the process of analog design but as a redefinition of the way analog
will work and be controlled in the software-centric systems of today and
tomorrow."
analogZone Says . . .
Is this deja vu? This is an arena where previous attempts at providing analog functionality, that can be programmed on the fly, have fallen by the wayside, in one case bringing a company to the verge of disappearing. As the VP of Engineering at a major analog semiconductor manufacturer said to that sad company's CEO as we were passing his table on the way to lunch, "You're doomed. Analog designers won't use the product because they believe they can do better, and digital design engineers don't know that they need to use it." I am certainly one of those analog engineers who think that way. But the CEO of Anadigm assured me that although the company expected some of that resistance, things have changed. Certainly the need to bring products to market faster and faster has put enormous pressure on design engineers to deliver much quicker (Anadigm says design times are reduced by about 80%); and if the prices of solutions with discretes and multiple ICs can be comparable to a FPAA solution like this, then the company could have a real winner on its hands. There are also some unique applications that the part could address.
The four configurable analog blocks (CABs) in the product -- that is the bits that do the processing -- are based on switched-capacitor array technology acquired by Motorola from Pilkington in the UK (a major glass manufacturer.) Anadigm was subsequently spun off as a venture-backed company. Obviously the use of switched-capacitor technology inevitably leads to limitations in the frequency performance that can be achieved but a lot of the world's products operate at speeds of audio frequencies and lower.
There are four analog input cells, all of which are differential (but can be operated single-ended), and the fourth input actually has a 4:1 differential input multiplexer driving it. This, of course, is the ideal connection for slow sensor interfacing. The cells have programmable anti-aliasing filters with a high-gain amplifier (with optional chopper stabilizer mode); the high precision input range is 0.5 to 3.5 V single-ended, up to 6.0 V differential and the chopper reduces the input offset from 15 mV (max.) down to 100 uV (max.)
Through a crossover system all the inputs can be associated with any multiple (programmable interconnect resources, the company calls them) of the CABs and those in turn drive either (or both) of the output cells, which have the same ranges as the inputs. The four CABs share a single look-up table which is driven from a configuration interface. The 256 byte look-up table can be used to generate arbitrary signals or be used as a gamma corrector to linearize a signal, or to define a transfer function. Non-linear functions can be defined with an 8-bit SAR ADC in loop to the table. Clocks and three different voltage references are also available. Each of the four CABs has both shadow and configuration RAM, allowing new settings to be loaded in the shadow RAM before being implemented by transfer to the configuration RAM.
Frequency maxes out at 2 MHz while clocks can be run at up to 40 MHz. The numbers are good enough for quite high-quality audio work with THD down at 80 dB and audio band SNR at 100 dB (broadband is 80 dB), crosstalk is better than 70 dB and the input amplifiers have a bandwidth of 170 MHz and a slew rate of better than 150 V/µs -- considerable improvements over the initial product offering (the AN10E400) as well as adding the dynamic reconfigurability.
I'm a neophyte when it comes to design software of any kind but I was able to use the demonstration software -- on line -- to design a continuously-adjustable audio filter. And that's not surprising as the company used a lot of customers, across the marketplace, as Beta users.
Power consumption of the 5-V parts varies with the amount of IC in use but ranges from about 25 to 60 mA in a low-power mode and 75 to 200 mA in the full-power mode.
Applications range from sensing of all kinds to industrial control, medical monitors, signal conditioning, and filtering of many kinds. The dynamic reconfigurability can be used specifically in complex test equipment variables, and the use of the same device with slightly different programming can give OEMs the base for offering products with varying levels of performance from one design.
I would bet that this is a product whose time has at last come -- and I think the company is well structured to take it where it wants to go. Anadigm is a fabless operation with relationships with fabs in Singapore and Taiwan.
The AN220E04 is in production in a QFP-44 and is
priced at $15 in 10-k piece lots. An evaluation kit complete with entry-level
software and documentation is available for $499. A multimedia demonstration
of the EDA tool can be viewed on the company's web site.