NXP Claims First-to-Market Leadership with High Speed Converters Compliant to New JEDEC Interface Standards

World’s first JEDEC JESD204A-based data converters demonstrated at IMS 2009 Boston, 8-11 June 09

Eindhoven, The Netherlands, June 2, 2009 - NXP, the independent semiconductor company founded by Philips, today announced a broad commitment to high-speed data converters featuring the new JEDEC JESD204A serial interface standard. The JEDEC-based data converters lead NXP’s forthcoming portfolio of new high-speed 16-bit Analog-to-Digital Converters (ADCs) and Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs).

Underscoring its commitment to the JEDEC interface standard, NXP will demonstrate a JESD204A-compliant data converter in the NXP booth at the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Society (MTT-S) / International Microwave Symposium (IMS) Conference in Boston next week. The demonstration will showcase the interoperability of NXP’s DAC1408D650, a dual-channel, four JESD204A data lane, 650 MSample/sec DAC with a Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGA.

Fully interoperable with cost-effective FPGAs from Lattice, Altera and Xilinx, NXP’s JEDEC JESD204A ADCs and DACs deliver outstanding high input frequency linearity performance. Compared with conventional parallel digital interfaces, the new JEDEC serial digital interface gives high-speed data acquisition engineers a compelling design-in option. The new JEDEC JESD204A interface typically utilizes six interconnect signals for a 14-bit dual-channel data converter, nearly an 80% reduction compared to a parallel interface which typically consumes 28 interconnect signals.

"NXP's new family of JESD204A-compliant converters promises to change the economics of high-speed signal processing system design. The benefits of a much smaller PCB footprint and 25% fewer board layers results in cost savings that often dwarf the price of the converters themselves," said John Croteau, VP Analog and Mixed-Signal Products, NXP Semiconductors. "With proven interoperability of companion JESD204A IP blocks available from all major FPGA vendors, manufacturers can get to market quickly and cost effectively with the cost and supply chain benefits of using industry-standard architectures."

The JEDEC JESD204A interface also provides higher interconnect signal integrity, single-bit error detection, and enables system performance scalability without PCB design changes. These technical merits render significant commercial advantages for system designers including lower system cost, increased system reliability, higher functional integration, faster time-to-market and reduced design complexity. Targeted at cellular basestations, medical imaging equipment, high-speed instrumentation, video broadcast equipment, and military data acquisition applications, the new data converters highlight NXP’s renewed commitment to the high-speed data converter market.

"Lattice is delighted to be working with NXP to ensure seamless interoperability between our ECP3 FPGAs and NXP's JESD204A data converters. Combining high value, low power FPGAs with high performance data converters offers our mutual wireless infrastructure customers unprecedented savings in cost and power consumption without sacrificing throughput and performance," said Shakeel Peera, director of strategic marketing for High-Density FPGAs, Lattice Semiconductor.

NXP’s new portfolio of data converters deliver outstanding dynamic performance at highly competitive power consumption levels, an important consideration as equipment designers strive for higher energy efficiency to reduce their customer’s total cost of ownership. Due to strength in small-signal RF products, RF power amplifiers and high-speed data converters, NXP is uniquely able to present a complete signal chain product portfolio - from antenna to digital baseband processor - for wireless communications infrastructure OEMs engaged in W-CDMA, LTE, WiMAX and multi-carrier GSM/EDGE system designs. Beyond this focus market segment, NXP’s new high-speed 16-bit data converters are targeted to a broad range of industrial equipment designs which require high linearity and low noise figures of merit.

Availability

Samples of NXP's JESD204A data converters are now available with lead customers. Commercial samples will be available to the broader market from Q3 2009.

About NXP Semiconductors

NXP is a leading semiconductor company founded by Philips more than 50 years ago. Headquartered in Europe, the company has about 28,000 employees working in more than 30 countries and posted sales of USD 5.4 billion (including the Mobile & Personal business) in 2008. NXP creates semiconductors, system solutions and software that deliver better sensory experiences in TVs, set-top boxes, identification applications, mobile phones, cars and a wide range of other electronic devices. News from NXP is located at www.nxp.com.

About JEDEC JESD204A

JEDEC JESD204A (2008), to which NXP Semiconductors was a leading contributor, is a new industry standard serial interface for the interconnection of data converters and logic devices supporting the concept of multiple synchronous serial data lanes, a key extension to the existing JEDEC JESD204 standard (2006). JEDEC is the leading developer of standards for the solid-state industry. Almost 3,300 participants, appointed by some 300 companies work together in 50 JEDEC committees to meet the needs of every segment of the industry, manufacturers and consumers alike. The publications and standards that they generate are accepted throughout the world. For more information, please visit http://www.jedec.org/.