Date: 06/02/2011
10 ppm accurate MEMS based oscillators with femtosecond Jitter for networking apps
Discera has made available what it calls world's highest performance MEMS oscillators for Networking, Server, Storage, and Video applications. The DSC11XX silicon oscillators are available at accuracies up to 10 ppm, and temperature ranges up to 125 degrees Celsius. Discera says DSC11XX are the highest performance silicon-based oscillators to enter production, with 300 femtosecond RMS phase jitter in CMOS, LVPECL, LVDS, and HCSL output versions.
"Silicon processes enable a great deal of programmability and flexibility, but until today, they did not provide the highest level of jitter performance, frequency stability, and noise immunity necessary for high speed communications", said Bruce Diamond, CEO of Discera.
Independent system-level testing has for the first time validated these Silicon MEMS oscillators as exceeding the performance of crystal oscillators for storage and networking applications. GRL testing of the LVPECL DSC1122 found that it surpassed 6G SAS compliance requirements with 59% lower transmitter jitter than the SAS 2.1 specification. UNH Interoperability Labs testing of the DSC1122 found that it surpassed 10 Gigabit Ethernet conformance requirements by delivering transmitter timing jitter 45% lower than the 10GBASE-T specification.
"In our testing of the same production 6G SAS HBA design with both the DSC1122 Silicon MEMS oscillator and a 3rd overtone crystal oscillator, we found that the use of the DSC1122 resulted in equivalent system performance with a bit lower measured transmitter random jitter and total jitter," said Mike Engbretson, Chief Technology Engineer of Granite River Labs. "The results showed the necessity of system-level compliance testing since the crystal oscillator had an even lower RMS phase jitter specification on a component level."
DSC11XX oscillators meet the performance demands of high-speed protocols including DisplayPort, Ethernet, Fibre Channel, PON, SAS, and Wi-Gig for signaling rates of 10 Gbps and beyond.
Other key features of the DSC11XX include:
Widest available temperature ranges from -20 to 70 C up to -55 to 125 C
Low operating power ranging from 25 to 55 mA
Industry standard footprints of 3.2 x 2.5, 5.0 x 3.2, and 7.0 x 5.0 mm as drop-in replacement for crystal oscillators
Production leadtime of 2 weeks
Price:
LVPECL DSC1122: Each US$3.80 in 10K pieces
CMOS DSC1121: Each US$1.0 in 10K pieces
Discera has also recently announced production availability of 10 ppm versions of its DSC1001 (fixed frequency) low jitter and the DSC8001(programmable from 1 to 150 MHz) programmable silicon oscillators. Discera says these oscillators are the first silicon timing products to deliver 10 ppm accuracy at up to 85 degrees Celsius as required by ultra-compact and mobile consumer electronics and computing products.
Their 2.6 billion hour MTBF reliability rating is over 2x better than the MEMS industry and is over 20x better than crystal oscillators with over 30x better shock and vibration immunity, according to Discera.
DSC1001 and DSC8001 are volume priced at US$0.48 in 100K quantities.
Editorial Product Rating: *** (High Vaue) These devices are examples of the advancements of MEMS devices compared to traditional oscillators. Also this leads to integration of on-chip oscillator.