IMEC Realizes 9bit 50Msamples/s ADC With Record Figure of Merit.SAN FRANCISCO -- At this week's International Solid State Circuit Conference, IMEC presented an ultra-low power (0.7mW) high-speed (50Msamples/s) analog to digital converter (ADC (1) See A/D converter. (2) (Apple Display Connector) A peripheral connector from Apple that combines digital video display, USB and power in one cable. ) with a figure of merit Noun 1. figure of merit - a numerical expression representing the efficiency of a given system, material, or procedure efficiency - the ratio of the output to the input of any system 2.5 times better compared to the best ADC ever reported. The ADC is especially suited for nomadic applications and is scalable in clock rate and towards the 45nm CMOS (Complementary Metal Oxide Semiconductor) Pronounced "c-moss." The most widely used integrated circuit design. It is found in almost every electronic product from handheld devices to mainframes. technology node and below. ADC's with 8 to 10 bits accuracy operating at several tens of Msamples/s have up to now been the territory of pipeline architectures resulting in large power consumption. Nomadic applications such as software-defined radio analog front-ends however require high-accuracy high-speed ADC's at very low power consumption. The chip was implemented in a 90nm digital CMOS technology and has a total area of 1.2x1.1mm2 from which 400x200om2 is used by the ADC core. Measurements on silicon show a power consumption of only 0.7mW at a sampling rate of 50Msamples/s. The measured INL INL Idaho National Laboratory INL Inner Nuclear Layer INL Instituut voor Nederlandse Lexicologie INL Integral Non-Linearity INL International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs Bureau (US Department of State) (integral non-linearity) and DNL DNL Day-Night Average Sound Level DNL Differential Non-Linearity DNL Daily News Live DNL Department of National Lotteries (Ghana) DNL Delete to New Line (differential non-linearity) are below 0.6LSB (Linux Standard Base) A standard interface (ABI) for Linux from the Linux Foundation (www.linux-foundation.org). Introduced in 2001 by the Free Standards Group, which later became the Linux Foundation, applications based on the LSB standard will run properly under (least significant bit). The ADC has a figure of merit of 65fJ per conversion step which is 2.5 times better compared to the best ADC ever reported and 5 times better compared to state-of-the-art ADC's designed for nomadic applications. As none of the ADC building blocks consumes any static power, the figure of merit is maintained down to very low conversion rate. The fully digital implementation of the ADC requires only MOS switches and metal-oxide-metal capacitors, making the ADC scalable to the 45nm node and beyond. About IMEC IMEC (www.imec.be) is a world-leading independent research center in nanoelectronics and nanotechnology. Its research focuses on the next generations of chips and systems, and on the enabling technologies for ambient intelligence. IMEC is headquartered in Leuven, Belgium, and has representatives in the U.S., China and Japan. In 2006, its estimated revenue (P&L) was EUR EUR In currencies, this is the abbreviation for the Euro. Notes: The currency market, also known as the Foreign Exchange market, is the largest financial market in the world, with a daily average volume of over US $1 trillion. 231 million. Further information on IMEC can be found at www.imec.be. |
|
||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion