Microwave Journal
www.microwavejournal.com/articles/8584-asic-north-enters-analog-ip-market

ASIC North Enters Analog IP Market

October 8, 2009

ASIC North Inc., a VLSI design service company, announced that it has entered the analog intellectual property (IP) market. In a move to enhance its analog/mixed-signal (A/MS) design services, ASIC North now offers IP for high performance, low power analog-to-digital converters (ADC). The hardened analog cores target the 180 nm high-voltage technology being co-developed by IBM Microelectronics and austriamicrosystems.

ASIC North’s ADC cores support the next generation A/MS design implementations in the high-voltage, 180 nm silicon technology.

The AN12512P is a 12-bit, 125 Ms/s pipeline data converter. It has the ability to scale power consumption by reducing precision or sampling frequency. At this performance point, the AN12512P is ideally suited for some of today’s fastest growing markets: GPS communications and medical instrumentation.

The AN210S is a 10-bit 2 MS/s SAR architecture data converter. Providing better performance than most commercially available IP for its area and power consumption, the AN210S is ideally suited for a number of general-purpose applications in a mixed-signal system.

“As the analog/mixed signal market continues to grow at the 180 nm technology node, we felt it was important to enable next generation mixed-signal designs with the IP necessary,” says ASIC North President, Michael Slattery. “Applications based upon high-voltage technologies are just beginning to proliferate in the market. Data converters are important IP components of these new systems. The analog cores announced today represent the beginnings of a new IP ecosystem.”