LONDON — Artic Silicon Devices AS (Trondheim, Norway), a startup company led by executives previously with Nordic Semiconductor ASA, has announced the Snowflake family of analog-to-digital converters. The company claims that its devices will consume a fraction of the power of market leading ADCs at better or superior performance.

The Snowflake family consists of the following products: the ASD0500: 13-bit dual channel 15- to 80-MSPS ADC, with power dissipation from 30 to 102-mW; the ASD0501: 13-bit single channel 15- to 80-MSPS ADC with power dissipation from 19 to 60-mW; the ASD0400: a 10-bit dual channel 15-80 MSPS ADC, power dissipation from 24 to 78-mW ASD0401: 10-bit single channel 15 to 80-MSPS ADC with power dissipation from 15 to 46-mW.

"The Snowflake family starts a new era in ultra low power ADC products," said Oystein Moldsvor, CTO with ASD, in a statement.

The company has developed a design technique where a physical optimum is found for biasing any given analog configuration. This is combined with a proprietary ADC pipeline architecture. "With the Snowflake family we prove that this architecture is superior to any other when it comes to the power/performance ratio. I am proud of our team and their achievement," he added.

The company has worked with potential OEM customers to define the products so that they target portable industrial markets such as medical and instrumentation. In addition to portable devices, the use of low-power dissipation ICs is increasingly important in digital consumer devices due to the need for energy conservation.

For the dual versions of Snowflake ADCs, samples and evaluation boards are available, and volumes will be available from mid-November. For the single versions, samples and evaluation boards are due to become available in February, and mass production is set to start in March.

The company did not say where it is getting its silicon made. Moldsvor was previously CEO of Chipidea Microelectronica Norway AS where he was familiar with Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co. Ltd. (Hsinchu, Taiwan) as a foundry supplier.

Related articles:

Arctic startup secures $4.5 million funding

Defense, T&M targeted with 250 megasample per second ADCs

ADI accelerates high-speed data conversion