1998-03-09 , S/IC-2006/240

Sunnyvale, Calif., March 9, 1998 Five leading logic suppliers today stated their support for the ALVC (Advanced Low-Voltage CMOS) logic standard. The announcement by Philips Semiconductors, Texas Instruments, Integrated Device Technology, Hitachi and Pericom comprises the largest multiple-source supply for any low-voltage logic family. Since its inception in 1994, ALVC has been the industry standard for high-performance 3.3 V CMOS logic.

To address the increasing systems demand for lower voltages and provide reliable multi- sourcing of fully interchangeable parts, Philips Semiconductors, TI, Hitachi, and IDT have concurred on the ALVC specifications. Today, the ALVC family encompasses a variety of bus interface functions: transceivers, multiplexers, drivers and flip flops. There are more than 50 16-, 18-, 20-, and 24-bit functions available from the ALVC supplier base. Octals and gates are in development.

"Believing in the ALVC standard from the outset, Philips Semiconductors quickly identified new applications to derive its current product offering and continues to aggressively and creatively expand the portfolio," said Catherine de Villeneuve, international product marketing manager of Philips Semiconductors. "We anticipate the support for ALVC will firmly establish the standard and augment the features and benefits to the industry."

"We knew that we had a winner when TI introduced ALVC in 1994," said Ed Agis, worldwide product marketing manager for Texas Instruments Standard Linear and Logic Group. "By knowing the applications from the onset, we were able to deliver a diverse and expansive product portfolio. It's one thing to offer the industry's high-speed, low- voltage logic family of choice, but having five world-wide suppliers of ALVC takes the product to a whole new level of significance."

The multiple supplier support for ALVC is unsurpassed in the industry, giving customers confidence levels needed to proceed with aggressive systems development and design.

The market for ALVC is growing, as indicated by the systems where products are deployed: high-speed servers and workstations, desktop and mobile computers, set-top boxes and various types of network equipment.

Hitachi's product marketing manager, Multi Purpose Semiconductor Business Operation, Fuyuhiko Murofushi said, "Hitachi introduced ALVC products into the market in 1996 based on the Hitachi-TI alliance and have grown the product lineup to cover a variety of interfaces. The market requirement for higher bus speed in memory interface, especially SDRAM, which bus speed is increasing to 100MHz, gives the ALVC series much more business opportunity than before."

Long-standing agreements among TI, Philips Semiconductors and Hitachi established multi-sourcing for low voltage logic families, such as LVC and ALVC. When Texas Instruments and Integrated Device Technology, Inc. announced a dual sourcing agreement for the ALVC logic family on Feb. 16, 1998, the number of worldwide ALVC suppliers reached five.

"The 3.3-volt logic market is growing rapidly, as applications such as telecommunications, networking and PCs demand lower power and higher performance," said Tony Walker, director of marketing for IDT's logic products division. "As a leader in high-performance logic, IDT believes the ALVC/LVC family provides an excellent solution to meet these requirements and is pleased to see it become an industry standard."

"Pericom has made a major commitment to support the ALVC family of products offering more than 40 16-bit, 18-bit,and 24-bit functions with I/O Tolerant and Bus Hold capability. The ALVC product offers the customer an excellent speed/power ratio with functions to support a wide array of bus oriented applications in workstations, memory modules, networking and high end personal computers," said David Duncan, Marketing Manager Silicon Interface Logic Products.

ALVC typically performs at speeds of 2.2ns at 3.3V, making it one of the fastest low- voltage logic families being sold today. ALVC has a number of popular applications, from high-speed memory interfacing to standard high-speed, low voltage designs. With next generation buses in mind, ALVC is also specified for operation at 2.5V. Low power applications often include multiple ranges of lower voltages in a single system. Ranges might include a mix of 3.3V, 2.5V or even sub 2.5V. For these ranges ALVC is particularly suitable.

To contact us about ALVC logic devices go to our World Wide Web sites: Philips Semiconductors  (http://cdrom.semiconductors.com/logic or  www.philipslogic.com), TI  (www.ti.com/sc/docs/asl/families/alvc.htm), IDT  (http://www.idt.com), Hitachi  (http://semiconductor.hitachi.com/search/), Pericom  (http:www.pericom.com).

About Philips Semiconductors
Philips Semiconductors, Inc., a subsidiary of Philips Electronics North America and an affiliate of Philips Electronics NV, headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is the ninth largest semiconductor supplier in the world. Philips Semiconductors' innovations in digital audio, video and mobile technology position the company as a leader in the consumer, multimedia and wireless communications markets. Sales offices are located in all major markets around the world and are supported by regional customer applications labs. Additional information on Philips Semiconductors can be obtained by accessing the home page at http://www.semiconductors.philips.com.

MORE ABOUT ALVC
Fully compliant with the JEDEC standard for loading and voltage specifications, ALVC is specified for speeds of 3.0ns (tpd max., ALVCH16245 @3.0V and 50pF loading), making it one of the fastest low-voltage CMOS logic families in the industry.

ALVC offers direct interface with LVTTL levels. Industrial operating temperature is from -40C to +85C. ALVC features flow-through standard pin-out architecture and low inductance, noise and ground bounce properties. ALVC devices offer both non-bushold and bushold options, with or without "damping resistor" features, indicating a large variety of bus interface functions. With bushold, the need for pull-up or pull-down resistors for floating inputs is eliminated. Series damping resistors help prevent signal overshoots and undershoots. ALVC devices are widely used in memory buffering, multiplexing and interfacing to 3.3V synchronous DRAMs, demonstrating typical propagation delays of less than 3ns. With a standard 24mA drive capability at 3.3V and static power consumption of 40uA or less, ALVC is ideal for all types of low-voltage applications.