NXP reaffirms belief in data conversion with JEDEC interface range

Maury Wood, high speed data converter marketing manager, said the launch was in response to interfaces moving to a high speed serial base. "It's becoming cost effective to make transmitters and receivers at the pin level," he said, "and do away with parallel interfaces. Package cost is now beginning to dominate the cost structure and this is one way to strike back." The initial launches from the range are aimed at basestations. "With increasing requirements in terms of performance and antenna diversity, there are more channels coming onto cards," Wood claimed. "So cards need to feature increased functional density. While manufacturers can reduce product size and cost, they can't reduce performance." Serial interfaces reduce pcb layout complexity, avoiding the need to create equal trace lengths as well as handling the bga package. As a consequence, said Wood, early customers have reported the ability to move from 16 layer pcbs to 12 layer devices using the converters. "If you look at a 14bit a/d converter," he continued, "there's normally 28 lines. We can reduce this by 80%." A further benefit, said Wood, is that converter resolution can be changed without any change to the pcb. The ADC1413Dxxx family uses the JEDEC JESD204A interface, providing transfer rates of up to 3.125Gbit/s per pin. The interface standard supports multiple converters, multiple lanes and multiple links. "We are guaranteeing transmission over 20cm on FR4," Wood claimed, "and have achieved 35cm in tests without breaking the 10^-12 bit error rate." The products will be rolled out in two phases. Although dual port devices have been announced now, Wood says a 'full portfolio' will be announced in October, with 10, 12, 14 and 16bit devices in serial, conventional and lvds formats.