SAR ADC Sets Figure of Merit Benchmark

Consuming 0.7 mW of power and delivering up to 50 Msamples/s, the company's nine-bit, 90-nm digital CMOS SAR ADC achieves a figure of merit of 65fJ per conversion step. Suited for nomadic applications in the IT realm, its power scales linearly with the clock rate over a very wide range which makes it desirable for software-defined radio applications. The design is available as white box IP for transfer to the industry. Additionally, the front-end chip is programmable for all present and future standards between 174 MHz and 6 GHz. For more details, call IMEC INC., San Jose, CA. (408) 551-4501.