Remove the “Frankenstein Effect” from Your Product by
Utilizing Analog ASICs
Whether you’re designing medical devices, industrial controls, or any sensor calibration and conditioning circuit, using incompatible discrete components can lead to integration issues and poor system performance, much like the disparate parts of Frankenstein’s monster. This white paper explores how analog ASICs alleviate these issues by consolidating multiple functions into a single chip, enhancing the interoperability of components within your product and improving overall functionality and reliability.
White Paper
Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel Frankenstein tells the story of a monster created with parts collected from random cadavers. The creature stands eight feet tall due to an inability to integrate all the necessary components into a standardized humanoid form factor. Additionally, this haphazard collection of limbs and organs lacks sufficient neural network connections, accounting for its awkward gate and general stiffness of its arms and shoulders as it walks with forearms extended. This is perhaps the first documented evidence of the problems that can occur when designing a system using “point-products,” i.e. parts selected for their unique special functions without regard for their need to interoperate perfectly.
In your design, these point-products are single function chips such as analog-to-digital converters, D/A converters, charge pumps, voltage references, precision references, op amps, and more. Basically, they are discrete analog ICs that perform one function.
Clearly, Mary Shelley was a visionary, and her monster creates a visual representation of the problems associated with point-product solutions.
Regardless of your application, the ability of your point-products to interface smoothly without accessorizing your PCB with unnecessary capacitors, resistors, transistors, and the like is of paramount importance.
Interoperability between semiconductor components takes on a whole new meaning in the context of applications requiring precision, accuracy, and low noise. Like Mary Shelley’s monster, multiple devices from multiple suppliers (e.g. ICs produced on different processes in different fabs) will perform differently under identical environmental conditions in any type of application. Do all your analog ICs exhibit the same temperature coefficient and track identically? Probably not.
Her monster’s unsteady locomotion and imperfect speech were the result of the inability of disparate subsystems to communicate anything other than rudimentary information — just enough to function. Any system using multiple ICs faces the same challenges. Ask any designer. Getting two chips to talk to one another, regardless of their specification matches, can often be challenging. Add more devices and the problem expands by the power of n, where n is the number of ICs that must intercommunicate. This is just one of many reasons to seek solutions that offer higher integration in the small-signal path (the monster’s nerve endings), where interfacing discrete elements such as A/Ds, DACs, low-noise amplifiers, MUXes, and more can create issues.
Another area of ASIC interest is in power management. Somewhere in the sphere of your system, there is but one source of power (often a battery) and all other power requirements must somehow be derived from it. This is one area where the ASIC plays well in portable or remote devices.
Power management is more than researching the dozens of companies that offer thousands of chips to provide suitable output voltages and currents for your complex application. Anyone can do that. It’s merely a selection exercise, eliminating those solutions that are unfit and winnowing down the remainder to a manageable collection of devices available from suppliers with whom you prefer to do business. Who cares if some of the chips contain functions you don’t need? The bottom line is that if it does all that you want it to do, you use it.
Power management is also more than developing solutions that run cool and conserve power. Today’s complex systems employ a wide variety of semiconductor technologies and may need a vast array of supply voltages for proper performance. It’s easy to see the need for power management devices for 1.0V, 1.2V, 1.5V, 1.8V, 2.2V, 2.5V, 2.8V, 3.0V, 3.3V, and more, all in the same box. Power management involves ensuring that no aspect of these various components causes interoperability issues.
For example, boost converters require a small oscillator, and different chips offer their maximum efficiencies at different frequencies. To supply the many voltages required for your product,, multiple converters may be needed, all operating at different frequencies for maximum efficiency. The potential for their frequencies to generate RFI either directly or through their respective harmonics and modulated sub frequencies is high.
By embodying all the power management functions into a single chip, the device can be designed to provide multiple boost converters, driven from a single oscillator whose maximum efficiency frequency is chosen so it will not interfere with any other components, and thus eliminate the problems of point-products.
From a reliability aspect, analog ASICs are designed specifically for a single task or application, often combining several equivalent analog ICs while minimizing unnecessary interface components like capacitors, diodes, resistors, and discrete transistors. Fewer components and interconnections mean fewer potential points of failure. Additionally, ASICs are typically more power-efficient than general-purpose chips, generating less heat to decrease thermal stress and improve long-term reliability.
Bob Frostholm
Co-Founder, CMO
Javelin ASIC Devices
Want to talk ASICs? Discuss your project? Call Bob at +1 650-222-6937