31 January 2012
Smallest, lowest power customisable clock ICs?
Silicon Labs has introduced what it claims to be the industry's smallest and lowest power customisable clock generators. According to the IC specialist, the Si512xx family, which is available in a 1.7mm2 package, offer up to 60% lower power than competing devices.
The clock generators are designed for space limited, cost sensitive embedded and consumer electronics such as portable media players, industrial metering and monitoring, portable navigation devices and other handheld power sensitive products.
The clock generators support up to three LVCMOS clock outputs from 3 to 200MHz in a single device and each output has four levels of output strength setting, which can be configured individually to match the load and trace length condition of the board. This, says SiLabs, is more than twice the configurability of the closest competing product.
According to SiLabs, the devices typically use up to 80% less board space than competing clock generator ICs and provide cost saving replacements for sub200 MHz LVCMOS oscillators. By supporting multiple LVCMOS outputs, the single chip devices are designed to replace multiple surface mounted crystals and oscillators with one economical device.
SiLabs adds that the clock generators reduce power consumption up to 60% compared to competing solutions, while offering longer battery life and providing output enable functionality to achieve lower power modes in standby or sleep states. Customisable spread spectrum clocking technology is incorporated to minimise emi, reducing peak emissions at the fundamental frequency and every harmonic.
Mike Petrowski, general manager of Silicon Labs' timing products, said: "No other small footprint clock solution today offers the high level of integration, power efficiency and configurability of the Si512xx clock family. Like the rest of our timing device family, these clock generator ICs offer customers the industry's shortest lead times for custom clocks to help streamline development cycles."
Production quantities are available now.
Author
Chris Shaw
Supporting Information
Websites
http://www.silabs.com/pr/clocks
Companies
Silicon Laboratories UK
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