Samplify Systems announces availability of first ultrasound beamforming ASIC for merchant market

CHICAGO, USA: Samplify Systems Inc., a technology company focused on delivering innovative semiconductors, modules, and subsystem solutions to the ultrasound industry, has announced availability of the industry's first merchant beamforming ASIC—the SAM2032.

The highly integrated SAM2032 leverages all the benefits of Samplify's award-winning Autofocus technology in a receive beamforming ASIC offering the industry's lowest power consumption and highest performance compared to current FPGA-based beamformer implementations. The highly configurable ASIC provides the flexibility for ultrasound OEMs to simplifying software and system design thus speeding time to market for a wide range of machines from ultra-low power hand-helds, through mid-range and high-end carts.

The receive beamformer is at the heart of any ultrasound front-end electronics sub-system. The SAM2032 ASIC addresses a critical gap in the current FPGA implementation of these devices. While higher-end FPGAs can be used to develop a high-performance receive beamformer, their higher cost, higher power consumption, and larger size limits their use to premium console ultrasound machines. Conversely, lower-end FPGAs can be used as a cost-effective alternative, but their limited resources present system performance constraints.

"The availability of the SAM2032 is an exciting development in the ultrasound industry," says Danny Kreindler, director for Ultrasound Products at Samplify Systems. "By capturing all of the receive beamformer's complexity in an ASIC device, the SAM2032 delivers the only high-performance, low-power and low-cost solution in the commercial market. The availability of this ASIC enables existing and new entrants, in both the traditional OEM space and in emerging non-traditional ultrasound applications, to gain quick and easy access to premier beamforming technology that will significantly accelerate product development."

SAM2032 highlights
The SAM2032 is a configurable 32-channel digital receive beamformer. The device interfaces to 12-bit ADCs with 32 serialized LVDS inputs. The high-performance data-path consists of delay memory, cubic interpolation, and apodization weighting prior to summation of the 32 channels. The device supports dynamic focusing and apodization where coefficients are updated continuously on every sample. RF beam data is converted to baseband using a true I/Q down converter for optimal noise performance.

With a tunable center frequency and programmable decimation filter bandwidth, an optimal tracking filter throughout the entire scan depth can be implemented. The device supports sampling rates of up to 50MHz and parallel beam processing using Samplify's QuadBeam technology that generates up to 4 receive beams simultaneously for higher frame-rates for color overlays.

Samplify's on-board AutoFocus engine is an application specific DSP that calculates the coefficients and weights for the beamformer data-path in real-time. This calculator reduces system complexity and cost because no external memory or real-time link to the back-end CPU is required.

The SAM2032 comes in a 672-ball 27x27mm PBGA lead-free package. Based on imaging modes employed, the device consumes a fraction of the power of comparable FPGA implementations.