April 25, 2011 – PRWeb — Si-Ware Systems (SWS) announced a novel Self Compensating Oscillator (SCO) technology, which produces an all-silicon oscillator that can achieve an overall frequency stability better than 100ppm over a temperature range of -20 to +70ºC.
The SCO is an all-silicon oscillator that does not require an external frequency reference for frequency generation, and instead generates its frequency from an internal LC oscillator. As the name implies, the SCO is self compensated and achieves its stability without the need for analog or digital compensation. The stability is achieved with a low-cost room temperature only (RTO) trimming routine.
The SCO can achieve a frequency stability of 25ppm over a temperature range of 0 to 70ºC, which is inclusive of initial accuracy and temperature, supply, and load variations. This stability is a breakthrough for all-silicon oscillator technology and allows for a viable alternative to quartz or silicon MEMS (SiMEMS) based oscillators.
A clock oscillator in any electronic system uses a mechanical resonator, typically quartz or hermetically sealed SiMEMS. A conditioning ASIC is packaged together with the resonator to achieve the required oscillator clock output. By generating its frequency via an internal LC oscillator, the SCO eliminates the need for a mechanical resonator and is a single silicon die. The SCO has the advantage of being lower cost versus mechanical resonator oscillators as well as being more robust to shock and vibration as there are no moving structures.
The SCO’s output frequency is factory programmable and can generate frequencies from 1MHz to 133MHz. Operating voltage can be set to 1.8V, 2.5V or 3.3V, with current consumption in the single-digit mA range for frequencies up to 100MHz. The noise performance of the SCO is very good – at 125MHz the period jitter is 2ps RMS and the phase jitter is 0.7ps RMS (integrated 1MHz to 20MHz).
The SCO is a miniature silicon die that can be packaged in plastic with industry standard footprints. Alternatively, the SCO can be packaged with other ICs, allowing these ICs to eliminate the external frequency reference. Additional clocking circuitry, such as frequency synthesizers, can be easily added to the SCO creating a highly integrated, single chip timing solution.
SWS is currently preparing samples of its SCO technology for delivery in Q2 2011 to interested partners.
Si-Ware Systems (SWS) is an independent fabless semiconductor company providing a wide spectrum of product design and development solutions, custom ASIC development and supply as well as standard products, using MEMS, Analog/Mixed-Signal and Radio Frequency (RF) Integrated Circuits (ICs) expertise. For more information, visit http://www.si-ware.com.
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