Date: 01/11/2011

Chips from Triad for interfacing high voltage sources to processors and FPGAs

Triad Semiconductor Inc., has made available a family of three new high-voltage via configurable arrays (VCAs). VCA-9, VCA-10, and VCA-11 enable the integration of high voltage analog, precision low voltage devices, digital functions and memory blocks into inexpensive single chip solutions. These new VCAs are fabricated on austriamicrosystem's 0.35-micron H35 CMOS process optimized for high voltage mixed signal performance and digital integration. Applications such as high voltage analog filters, replacement of CPLD and analog designs, high voltage multi-channel data acquisition, sensor interface, high voltage actuators and power management can benefit from the mix of 3.3V, 5V, 10V and 20V resources available on these arrays.

"Many applications are seeing the need for higher voltages to interface with new sensors and provide improved noise immunity," said Reid Wender, VP of Marketing at Triad Semiconductor, "These new VCAs are perfect companions for today's low voltage processors and FPGAs that want to control high voltage resources cost effectively without risking damage to their sensitive deep sub-micron circuitry." The VCA-9, VCA-10 and VCA-11 are based on Triad's silicon-proven via-configurable array (VCA) technology, which allows designers to quickly and inexpensively customize analog and digital features with lower power consumption and greater system cost savings than previous ASIC solutions.

Technical highlights as per Triad include:
VCA-11 family of devices shares similar analog and digital characteristics. The arrays provide a range of analog and digital capabilities with VCA-9 being the largest of the new arrays, VCA-10 smaller and VCA-11 the smallest of the three devices.

VCA-9 (VCA-9 Product Page)
30 20V op-amps, 17 5V op-amps, 3,400+ 20V FETs, 3 12-bit ADCs, 2 10-bit DACs, 18.4K ASIC Gates, 24Kbits of SRAM, 78 20V analog I/O, 16 5V analog I/O, 46 digital I/O

VCA-10 (VCA-10 Product Page)
3 20V op-amps, 48 5V op-amps, 2,200+ 20V FETs, 1 12-bit ADC, 2 10-bit DACs, 9.2K ASIC Gates, 12Kbits of SRAM, 50 20V analog I/O, 50 5V analog I/O, 31 digital I/O

VCA-11 (VCA-11 Product Page)
3 20V op-amps, 40 5V op-amps, 1,650+ 20V FETs, 1 12-bit ADC, 2, 10-bit DACs, 6.9K ASIC Gates, 9Kbits of SRAM, 46 20V analog I/O, 42 5V analog I/O, 25 digital I/O

All of the analog and digital resources are arranged into tiles. A single Via-Only mask layer change configures and interconnects these analog and digital resources into a wide range of mixed signal circuits. If the design can be conceived of as an interconnection of op-amps, resistors, capacitors, logic and memory then the design can be implemented on a Triad VCA.