Product of the Year Award Winner
MEMS oscillators mark
the beginning of the end for quartz
Like CRTs, quartz oscillators have been around for decades. But unlike CRTs, whose role as the primary display technology has been usurped by advancing LCD technology, quartz devices have retained their position, remaining the undisputed time reference for electronic circuits. That is, they did until last year, when the SiRes SiT8002 programmable oscillator family�which buries a four-armed MEMS resonator in each chip before integrating CMOS circuitry on top�was introduced (Electronic Products , July 2006, p. 75 ) and went into production.
SiTime's SiRes SiT8002 MEMS oscillators
Plug-in replacements for 1 to 125-MHz Epson SG-8002 and similar quartz-based oscillators, the single-chip MEMS devices exhibit better aging and thermal hysteresis characteristics than quartz-based parts at comparable prices. Further, the technology scales with process geometry�providing improved SNR as devices shrink�and promises to allow integration of timing references on any chip; no wonder quartz oscillator suppliers are already forming technology alliances with this MEMS oscillator's developer.
SiTime, Sunnyvale, CA
Courtney Dimpel 408-328-4427
Fax 408-328-4439
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