1999-01-12 , S/IC-2051/24
Product News From Philips Semiconductors

Customer applications drive design innovation for high performance, low voltage logic

Philips Semiconductors today announced the creation of a new advanced very-low voltage CMOS (AVC) logic family to meet the growing demand from customers for a faster, ultra-low noise logic solution for applications with voltage ranges from 3.6 V down to 1.2 V.

"The AVC product family is at least 40 percent faster than other logic families on the market today," said Catherine de Villeneuve, worldwide director of marketing, Logic Products Group at Philips Semiconductors. "We have been working closely with our partner and customers to develop the exact specifications of the family. Based on this collaboration, the AVC product family is the optimal solution for high performance applications."

The new PC133 specification for 133 MHz SDRAM modules recently proposed by IBM as a JEDEC standard, lists the Philips Semiconductors' AVC products such as the  74AVC16834,  74AVC16835, and the  74AVC16836 as a PC133 solution for registered drivers. Thus, Philips Semiconductors is positioned as the preferred supplier for PC133 memory module solutions.

New high performance applications such as workstations, PCs, networking servers, telecommunications switching equipment and base stations, will benefit from the AVC Logic family's performance, and existing applications will find an easy upgrade path to the AVC family from lower speed logic families.

With increasing demand for speed, guaranteeing low noise during the switching phase is a challenge. To respond to these conflicting requirements, the AVC family uses Philips Semiconductors Dynamic Control Output (DCO) circuitry, which automatically lowers the output impedance of the circuit during signal transitions and raises it when the transition passes through the threshold voltage. This process draws enough current to achieve high signal speeds while rapidly switching the impedance level to reduce the undershoot and overshoot noise usually associated with high-speed logic devices.

The AVC logic family is a low voltage, low power family, which effectively supports mixed voltage mode systems, because it is compatible with 3.3 V, 2.5 V and 1.8 V and is 3.6 V tolerant. It is the first logic family to achieve maximum propagation delays of less than 2ns, with minimal noise levels. While running at 3.3 V, a 74AVC(H)16244 (16-bit tri-state buffer) it achieves a blazing performance of 1ns (typical propagation delay); while at 2.5 V it achieves 1.1ns (typical); and at 1.8 V, they achieve 1.5ns (typical) speed.

Philips Semiconductors designed the AVC logic family with a power-off feature, Ioff, that disables outputs from the device to support live or hot insertion of boards into system backplanes. This is critical for telecommunications, networking and other high-speed applications which must remain running while boards are inserted or removed.

Philips Semiconductors is using one of its advanced submicron CMOS processes to create the new AVC product family. Initially all AVC products will be available in thin-shrink small-outline packages (TSSOP). Future plans may incorporate Philips Semiconductors' advanced, space saving, 32-bit, low profile, fine-pitch ball grid array (LFBGA) packaging.

Samples of the first five members of the AVC logic product family will be available from Philips Semiconductors in Q1 1999. Full-scale production is planned for early Q3 1999. In high volume quantities (1000s), Philips Semiconductors AVC logic typical device pricing is anticipated to be $2.90 each. Based on an alternative source agreement, these devices will also be available from another supplier.

Part numbers planned to be available are:

DEVICE	FUNCTION
74AVC(H)16244	16-bit buffer/driver
74AVC(H)16245	16-bit bus transceiver
74AVC(H)16373	16-bit D-type transparent latch
74AVC(H)16374	16-bit D-type flip-flop
74AVC16834	18-bit registered driver with inverted register enable
74AVC16835	18-bit registered driver
74AVC16836	20-bit registered driver

Driven by customer demand, Philips Semiconductors' AVC Logic family is the fastest logic on the market and offers ultra low noise and low voltage for applications such as DRAM modules, PCs, workstations, networking servers, telecommunications switching equipment and base stations.

Philips Semiconductors, a division of Royal Philips Electronics, headquartered in Eindhoven, The Netherlands, is the eighth largest semiconductor supplier in the world (according to Dataquest's preliminary 1998 ranking by sales). 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 systems labs.