Wednesday March 10 , 2010

SD-DAC For Consumer Audio

Sigma-Delta Stereo DACs for Consumer Audio

The Intrinsix Sigma-Delta Stereo DACs for Consumer Audio (SD-DAC-CA) are part of the larger offering of Sigma-Delta IP available from Intrinsix.

 

The family of SD-DAC-CA IP is generated utilizing proprietary, patent-pending techniques within the Intrinsix SDM Refinery toolset.  A Sigma-Delta Modulator DAC leverages digital gates to perform data converter functions.  A high Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) is achieved by pushing the quantization noise to high frequencies outside the band of interest.  The challenge in Sigma-Delta DAC design is the "shaping" of this noise, which is characterized by the Noise Transfer Function (NTF), and the design of efficient filters to attenuate the high frequency noise.  The SDM Refinery automates this process:  The engineer specifies an Over-Sampling Ratio (OSR), quantization levels, order of complexity and center frequency and SDM Refinery creates the desired DAC.  The Intrinsix SDM Refinery also designs high efficiency polyphase half-band interpolation filters to ease some of the system level performance requirements.

Intrinsix SD-DAC-CA are:

*    Perfect for consumer audio applications that such as:

  • Consumer Audio Systems (Home Stereo, Car Stereo, etc)

  • Portable Audio Systems (MP3/CD Players, Cell Phones, PDAs, etc)

  • Consumer Multimedia Systems (Home Theater for example)

  • Portable Multimedia Systems (DVD, Cell Phones, PDAs, etc.)

  • Desktop and Mobile Computing Platforms (PCs, Laptops, Tablets, PDAs, etc)

  • Mobile and Stationary Gaming Systems

*    Cost effective design geared for aggressive consumer market

*    Silicon proven architectures can be incorporated in a variety of CMOS-based silicon technologies such as:

  • TSMC, SMIC, UMC, etc

  • .250μm, .130μm, and .180μm

*    Available in 16, 18, 20 and 24-bit resolutions

*    Available in 4th, 5th and 6th Order  SD Modulation Complexity (others available upon request)

*    Able to achieve a Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) of 115db

*    Optimized for multi-channel functionality

*    Compact design resulting in small die area

*    Very low in power consumption and has a customizable Low Power Mode

*    Highly tunable for each application

*   Available as RTL and GDSII as well as RTL and Behavioral System models

       in industry standard formats such as Verilog-A or Simulink