An 8-bit analogue-to-digital converter (ADC) family from National Semiconductor makes its claim for top sampling speed, delivering 6Gsample/s data capture at 3.6W.

The single ADC083000 ADC operates at 3Gsample/s and can be interleaved in a pair for 6Gsample/s data capture without any additional clock adjustment circuitry.

Full-power input bandwidth is 3GHz and low power consumption is1.8W.

National is also introducing two other ADCs, the ADC082500, capable of sampling speeds up to 2.5Gsample/s, and the ADC08B3000.  The ADC08B3000, which combines 3Gsample/s sampling and a programmable 4kbyte memory buffer, is suitable for applications where the data is captured in bursts and transferred at lower, more manageable data rates.

The ADC083000 provides a wide, 3GHz, full-power bandwidth, allowing for sampling of wideband signals even in the second Nyquist band. It has an adjustable sampling clock phase that allows designers to interleave multiple ADCs on a board without using costly, external clock-adjustment circuits.

The converter offers 1:4 de-multiplexed outputs standard for simplified data capture or a new 1:2 output mode for reduced pin count when interfacing with an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) or field-programmable gate array (FPGA).

Both of these output modes use low-voltage differential signalling (LVDS).  The ADC083000 also has test patterns on the outputs for easier system design and test.  A three-wire serial bus controls these features, as well as on-chip functionality, and gain and offset fine-tuning for the input.

The ADC083000 typically achieves 7.0 effective number of bits (ENOB), 44 dB signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and 54 dB spurious free dynamic range (SFDR) when sampling a 750 MHz input at 3 GSPS.  The ADC082500 is a 2.5 GSPS version of the ADC083000.

All three ADCs are sampling with volumes available in January 2007.  

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