Weekly Roundup: MEMS oscillators get ready for takeoff

Weekly Roundup: MEMS oscillators get ready for takeoff

It has been years since we started covering MEMS oscillators in Electronic Products Magazine and now in 2010 I finally see MEMS taking off. SiTime (www.sitime.com) announced last May that its MEMS First CMOS oscillators and clock generators were expected to exceed 20 million units in May 2010. We had actually covered the SiT8002 MEMS programmable oscillator in 2006 as a first of its kind and gave it a Product of the Year award. This programmable oscillator uses a highly reliable MEMS resonator and advanced analog circuits to provide a wide range of programmable frequencies with very low jitter. Since then, the company introduced more MEMS products, such as the SiT8102, SiT8103, and SiT9102.

Our title for the article was “MEMS oscillators mark the beginning of the end for quartz,” but quartz crystals are still shipping and will be for years to come.

While MEMS oscillator technology is targeted to replace quartz crystal, other companies, such as Silicon Laboratories (www.silabs.com) have alternative timing circuits, such as its 100% CMOS oscillator, (replacement for crystal oscillators). The company recently acquired Silicon Clocks with its CMEMS Technology. The technology, which pairs CMOS with MEMS, is aligned with Silicon Labs’ efforts to leverage its CMOS-based timing products into high-volume applications such as consumer electronics.

Another leader in MEMS-based technology for the clock and timing markets is Discera (www.discera.com), which recently announced the successful completion of its Series D financing, having raised $11 million. The company hopes that upcoming new products will win it a large share of the $5 billion timing market.

A great article on this topic, “MEMS oscillators vs quartz technology,” can be found by clicking http://tiny.cc/cj1sa