Cypress intros most flexible ultra-low phase jitter solution

SAN JOSE, USA: Cypress Semiconductor Corp. has introduced the FleXO family of programmable high-performance clock generators.

The new clocks deliver ultra-low phase jitter as low as 0.6 ps – typical, across the 12 kHz to 20 MHz range, exceeding the requirements of demanding high-speed serial interface standards such as 10 Gigabit Ethernet, 10 Gigabit Fibre Channel, PCI Express and SATA.

The flexible clocks can be instantly programmed in the factory or field to any frequency up to 650 MHz. The programmability of the FleXO family speeds development and simplifies testing for improved manufacturing quality.

FleXO clock generators employ powerful, programmable Phase Locked-Loop technology, which can be used in integer or Frac-N mode, to synthesize and tightly control the frequency of ultra-low noise clock signals using a standard low-cost crystal input.

These solutions provide a strong alternative to expensive and inflexible SAW oscillators and overtone crystal oscillators. The family is ideal for switches and routers, 3G wireless base stations, Fiber-To-The-Home (FTTH) hubs, enterprise hard-disk drives, test equipment, professional video equipment and any system requiring high-performance clocks.

"The FleXO high-performance clock family offers the industry’s best combination of flexibility and performance, enabling system designers to bring their products to market faster, and procurement managers to simplify their supply chains," said Dave Kranzler, vice president of Synchronous Memory and Timing Products at Cypress. "The FleXO family moves our timing solutions portfolio into the high-speed networking and telecom equipment markets, where we have strong customer relationships based on our synchronous SRAM leadership."

"Demand for increasing precision is at the heart of the growing market for high-performance timing ICs in communication and data processing applications," said Sergis Mushell, principal research analyst at Gartner. "Programmable clocks offer design flexibility to engineers, addressing a wide array of applications within the communication and data processing segments."

The FleXO family leverages Cypress’s patented programmable clock technology to instantly generate any frequency from 50 to 690 MHz, including non-standard frequencies often required to optimize performance of an FPGA or ASIC. Designers can adjust the output frequency of a FleXO clock via simple pin selection or I2C programming to allow usage of a single device across a family of hardware platforms.

FleXO clock generators support frequency margining, which enables designers to vary clock frequency with 0.2ppm precision to test system robustness across potential frequency fluctuations. The FleXO family is available in a broad array of synthesizer, VCO and crystal-inside XO and VCXO options to support a variety of applications.

FleXO high-performance clocks are currently in production in multiple configurations, and are available in 8-pin TSSOP, 16-pin TSSOP and 6-pin LCC packages. The CY3675-CLKMAKER1 CyClockMaker Programming Kit is currently available for $160, and the CY3675-LCC6A FleXO Socket Adapter is available for $57. These kits are available on the Cypress eShop.