acquisitionZONE Products for the week of September 15, 2003
Intersil Corporation, a world leader in the design and manufacture of high performance analog solutions, introduced six new current feedback amplifiers (CFAs) for high-speed video and monitor applications requiring low power consumption. The latest addition to Intersil's new high-speed operational amplifier portfolio, the Elantec EL516X family includes 200 Megahertz (MHz), 500 MHz and 600 MHz bandwidth amplifiers. Slew rates of 1700 V/us and 4000 V/us are achieved while drawing only 0.85 mA and 1.7 mA of current respectively.
"The latest addition to the Elantec op amp family combines high bandwidth and slew rate performance with very low supply current -- offering customers the best slew rate to power ratio in the industry today," said Sameer Vuyyuru, Intersil's director of marketing for video and op amps. "Our new EL516X family of single current feedback amplifiers is a perfect fit for today's battery-powered and portable video applications requiring high bandwidth and slew rate performance and very low power consumption. A very high 'gain-of-2' bandwidth makes this line the fastest in the industry for double-terminated video applications. Many of these new CFAs also incorporate power-saving fast enable/disable that reduces supply current to 100 microamps per amplifier, preserving precious battery run time."
Intersil's latest current feedback amplifiers include the EL5160 and
EL5161, which feature 200 MHz bandwidths at -3dB and 1700 volt per microsecond
(V/us) slew rates while operating from a mere 0.85 milliamp (mA) supply
current. Intersil's EL5162 and EL5163 offer 500 MHz of -3dB bandwidth and
4000 V/us slew rates while consuming only 1.7 mA of supply current. For
very high bandwidth applications, Intersil offers the new EL5164 and EL5165
current feedback amplifiers featuring 600 MHz bandwidths at -3dB and 4000
V/us slew rates while requiring only 5 mA of supply current. All of these
devices operate from single and dual supply range of 5 volts to 12 volts.
The EL5160, EL5162 and EL5164 incorporate an enable/disable function to
reduce the supply current to 100 microamps typical per amplifier.
analogZONE Says . . .
The EL5166/67 have already been reviewed in analogZONE, and these additional parts in the family continue the story that the high-frequency parts started. From the EL5160/61 to the EL5162/63 and the EL5164/65 we see an increase in 3 dB bandwidth with increasing slew rate (until the apparent limit is reached) with a nicely-controlled increase in supply current.
Like their high-frequency siblings these parts exhibit super slew rates while the distortion numbers are good for standard-pin products. The EL5164/65 offers a fairly dramatic improvement in the distortion numbers with a marginally higher current drain for the bandwidth improvement from 500 MHz to 600 MHz over the siblings below.
Input noise in the pair that I looked most closely at, the EL5164/65 (the EL4164 adds enable/disable), is a little higher than I was expecting (from the EL5166/67 experience) at 2.1 nV/rtHz, typical, while it's difficult to compare apples-to-apples when the input noise voltage and current are quoted at 1 MHz. The only number which stuck out as being marginal was the CMRR at 62 dB typical. Output swing capability is high with 140 mA of output current available. No open-loop gain numbers are quoted. The data sheet specifications are with split 5-V rails but they can be used with single rails as well with from 5 V up to 12 V total span.
Singles, doubles and triples are available with parts in SOT-23-5 or -6, and triples in SO-16 and QSOP-16. The double packages are not noted in the preliminary data sheet.
The most remarkable thing about these parts is the frequency-to-power consumption ratio, which is quite superb and this makes them ideal for portable applications where bandwidth is needed, but that doesn't eliminate them from non-portable sockets and there is no premium being looked for in the pricing.
All the single amplifier parts are in production with the EL5160/61 priced at $0.68, the EL5162/63 at $1.13, and the EL5164/65 at $1.23, all in 1000-piece lots.