Clock Synthesizers Provide High-Speed Wireline and Wireless Communications Solutions

By Hans Lewis, TMCnet Contributor

Micrel (News - Alert) announced the SM802xxx, the first products from Micrel's ClockWorks Flex family, the next generation of high performance programmable Clock Synthesizers.

The solutions are aimed at high-speed wireline and wireless communications and networking applications. These devices are configured through fuse-based One Time Programming (OTP) and eliminate the need for lengthy mask spin cycles. Prototypes can be typically supplied to customers within days compared to months using conventional mask-optioned technologies, allowing for faster and better optimized clock tree solutions.

Rami Kanama, director, high bandwidth products at Micrel said, "The addition of ClockWorks Flex SM802xxx programmable Clock Synthesizers and SM84xxxx product families complement Micrel's high-end Precision Edge clock distribution product portfolio very nicely. These products offer the highest performance available on the market today, with jitter in the sub-100 femtosecond range and excellent Power Supply Rejection Ratio (PSRR). The unrivaled flexibility offered by the programmable ultra-low jitter product family provides designers with the freedom to tailor a device to their exact requirements. In most design cycles, the system clocking requirement is usually determined late in the design phase, so the SM802xxx programmable family can help to significantly accelerate development times. This leads to optimized system performance by providing a customized solution in a fraction of the time normally required for a new clock spin."

Offered in 16-pin, 24-pin and 44-pin QFN package options, the SM802xxx family provides the right-sized solution for customer-defined precision timing requirements, supporting up to 8 differential or single-ended output clocks. This enables the generation of practically all standard reference clock frequencies used in high speed serial interfaces such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet, SONET/SDH, Fibre Channel, SAS (News - Alert)/SATA, PCIe, sRIO, Infiniband, and CPRI.

The new ClockWorks FLEX product line augments Micrel's, ClockWorks SM84xxxx family of ultra-low jitter Clock Synthesizers. These products are also well suited for high-performance networking and communications applications that have stringent phase noise requirements. The SM84xxxx, standard line of LVCMOS, LVPECL and LVDS Clock Synthesizers is offered in 8-pin, 16-pin, 20-pin and 24-pin TSSOP package options. The devices are currently available in volume quantities, with pricing for the SM802xxx line, starting at $5.10 for 1K quantities. For samples, please contact your local Micrel sales rep.

The new family of ClockWorks Flex programmable Clock Synthesizer products along with the SM84xxxx family of clock synthesizers is designed to take a low frequency crystal or system reference clock input and produce very low jitter high frequency differential or single-ended outputs, with frequencies up to 840MHz. They offer a broad range of output types including LVCMOS, LVPECL, LVDS, and HCSL. With hundreds of programmable and standard configurations available in several QFN and TSSOP package options, the lead-free solutions operate at -40C to +85C and are targeted for use in switches/routers, high-end storage and server platforms for enterprise and data center usage, SONET/SDH transport and access equipment, xPON equipment, video servers and cellular base stations.

Micrel is an industry leader in analog, high bandwidth communications and Ethernet IC solutions

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(source: http://communication-solutions.tmcnet.com/topics/communication-solutions/articles/116055-clock-synthesizers-provide-high-speed-wireline-wireless-communications.htm)