New cores and peripherals enrich Dolphin's kit for audio ADC and DAC converters

Grenoble – April 12, 2005. The Virtual Component Provider announces immediate availability of a new generation of ADC and DAC cores enabling low-power Codecs for multimedia SoCs in deep submicron processes: 0.25 um, 0.18 um and beyond. Both ADC and DAC converters benefit from architectural advances to operate at 1.8 V nominal. The CODAT-LV kit features outstanding performance trade-offs once embedded in a SoC for portable applications.

The analog part of the stereo ADC modulator in some 0.18 um process is as small as 0.36 mm2 with a power consumption of 800 uA typical for a SNR of 88 dB. The analog counterpart for stereo DAC demodulator is as small as 0.7 mm2 with a power consumption of 2.8 mA typical for a SNR of 93 dB.

Such cores are offered with various peripherals: capacitor-less PGA, mixer, variable OSR, PLL-less digital filters... all optimized for low-voltage operation.
ADC, DAC and CODEC can be safely configured-to-order according to the target specifications of each SoC. This ensures area-effective converters with no need for external parts, thus shrinking the system-level bill of material.

“The addition of such cores and peripherals to our kit for audio ADC and DAC already facilitates applications with competitive SoCs, as diverse as MP3, DSC, DVC or mobile phones” rejoices Jean-François Pollet, Dolphin CEO, who explains: “The availability of exclusive peripherals, such as the PLL-less digital filter with variable OSR, certainly minimizes the integration cost, but also facilitates design-in of such high-performance audio converters”.

Readily available in 0.18 um processes at TSMC or SMIC, all kit elements have been designed for easy and safe migration towards most submicron processes.
SoC Integrators should not postpone evaluating the benefits for their product in such audio features.