Portfolio Press Release
SpectraLinear Inc. Announces World's First Non-Volatile Programmable PC Clock Family
Fine programming granularity, effective clock signal remedy, with fast "days-to-samples" hand designers speedy time to market.
SpectraLinear, Inc. Press Release
30 March 2009
Santa Clara, CA and Taiwan, Taipei — March 30, 2009 — SpectraLinear, Inc. a leading provider of timing solutions for the consumer, computation, embedded, and communication markets, today announced the world's first non-volatile programmable PC clock family. The family, PC EProClock®, is designated SL2874x and is based on SpectraLinear's production proven, proprietary EProClock® technology.
"Our Programmable PC clock platform, the first in the industry, offers unsurpassed flexibility and the fastest time-to-market to our customers" said Ilhan Refioglu, president and CEO of SpectraLinear. "Our programmable technology allows system designers to achieve high signal integrity, optimize timing margins and performance, improve manufacturing margins and reduce EMI... all this with best-of-class power consumption and cost structure."
System board designers that implement SLI's PC EProClock enjoy unprecedented benefits from the combination of non-volatile configurability with state of the art clock generation capability. This effective structure allows the designer to promptly achieve optimum compliance and clock signal integrity; historically, attainable typically through device and/or board redesigns impacting schedules by weeks or months. PC EProClock best-of-class performance, along with its ease of implementation and versatility to support different platform requirements, delivers rapid time-to-market results by transitioning from the typical six-to-eight weeks, that competitive devices offer, to the PC EProClock days-to-sample updated configurations.
Board designers effectively achieve high quality clock signals because the PC EProClock quickly remedies such time consuming design parameters as impedance matching, rise/fall times, skew and phase shifting, differential clock matching, among other signal integrity issues that typically hinder compliance and performance. Furthermore, PC EProClock allows tight control of these parameters through non-volatile programmability, consequently enhancing system margin testing and maximizing manufacturability with a production ready clock component.
System board designers are provided the ultimate in flexibility and configurability with a host of key features. Fine programming granularity with over 8,000 non-volatile programming bits covers a wide range of configurations on parameters related to center frequency, signal integrity, and EMI reduction, to name a few.
Elie Ayache, SpectraLinear's VP of Segment Marketing and PC clock B.U. explained that "main system clocks are appropriately analogized with the heartbeat of the system, rendering them a crucial device for the healthy performance of a board. Currently available PC system clock devices offer limited, volatile programmability, most often requiring engineers to perform board surgeries and component redesigns to meet stringent compliance and signal quality requirements. SpectraLinear's intelligent combination of non-volatile EProClock technology with a robust multi-PLL clock generator, hands the board designers the world's first non-volatile programmable PC clock with a superlative level of configurability. This ultimately assists the designer in fine tuning the clocks in a timely matter and assisting them in meeting their milestones while keeping their cardio pulse intact."
Another benefit to SpectraLinear's PC EProClock is the saving that goes beyond time, efforts, and board component reduction. The device can be configured per customer requirements and delivered to operate in the system at boot time. Therefore, alleviating the burden of writing a BIOS subroutine that typically occupies memory space for programming the main system clock at start-up through a volatile, 2-wire interface.
Lower Power for Many Apps
The SL2874x PC clock family operates at 1.8 volt internally in the core. It features less than 10 milliwatts (mW) power consumption per PLL, approximately half of the power consumed by typical PLLs.
Primarily designed for notebook, mobile/wireless applications and desktop PCs, the new SpectraLinear PC EProClock is well suited for a variety of system designs. Due to its inherent high quality of signals and programmability, it is ideal for servers and a wide range of embedded applications. Those include office automation, robotics, data communications, automotive, security systems, storage, and many others.
Pricing and Availability
The PC EProClock products are available now. They come in QFN and TSSOP packages with pin counts ranging from 28 to 72 pins. and priced from $2.89 to $5.93 in 1,000 unit quantities. These devices are all lead free and halogen free.
About SpectraLinear
SpectraLinear is an integrated timing solutions company that focuses on the consumer, computer and communication markets using innovative, high performance, fast time-to-market silicon platforms. In October, 2006 SpectraLinear acquired Cypress' PC clock division, immediately establishing itself as the largest pure-play integrated timing device company. SpectraLinear is based in Santa Clara, CA and has offices in Taipei, Bangalore and Istanbul. For more information go to www.spectralinear.com.
EProClock is a Registered Trademark of SpectraLinear Inc.
