TI’s new oscillator family offers the industry’s lowest jitter to optimize signal integrity in performance-critical applications

Easy customization and system-level features reduce design-cycle time

Bangalore, 14^th December 2015 —  Texas Instruments (TI) (NASDAQ: TXN) today introduced a family of fully programmable, pin-selectable and fixed-frequency 7-mm-by-5-mm differential oscillators that provides the industry’s lowest jitter of 90 femtoseconds (fs), which enables designers to optimize signal integrity and reduce data-transmission errors in performance-critical applications. The LMK61xx family enables easy customization, frequency margining and support for multiple frequencies on one device to clock field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), digital-to-analog converters (DACs) and high-speed serial links. For more information, visit http://www.ti.com/lmk61xx-pr.

Key features and benefits of LMK61xx oscillators

• Industry’s lowest jitter: 90-fs typical root-mean-square (RMS) jitter performance over 12 kHz to 20 MHz is less than half that of competing oscillators, allowing designers to improve reliability and system margin in communications, test and measurement, and medical equipment.
• Flexible and easy to customize: The family of 11 oscillators includes programmable, pin-selectable and fixed-frequency devices, offering low-voltage pseudo emitter-coupled logic (LVPECL), low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) and high-speed current-steering logic (HCSL) output formats, and frequencies ranging from 10 MHz to 1 GHz. The family provides a variety of options to meet designers’ needs.
• The programmable device offers ultimate flexibility, with an I²C interface as well as an on-chip electrically erasable programmable read-only memory (EEPROM) with 100 write cycles, enabling designers to easily customize the start-up frequency.
• The pin-selectable device offers design flexibility by consolidating up to seven unique frequencies and output formats on one device.
• The fixed-frequency oscillators support fast, frequency-independent lead times.
• Reduced design cycle time:
• Glitchless fine/coarse frequency margining enables designers to ease compliance and stress testing of their systems during prototype design verification.
• Industry-standard 6-pin and 8-pin oscillator footprints simplify adoption and evaluation in existing designs without the need for board redesign.

Tools to speed design-in process

TI offers the following tools to help designers quickly select, evaluate and design with the new LMK61xx oscillators.

• The oscillator customization tool can recommend an LMK61xx oscillator based on an application’s programmability, output format and frequency needs. The tool also helps designers place custom sample requests for applications that have unique requirements.
• LMK61xx oscillator evaluation modules (EVMs) are available from the TI store and authorized distributors, priced as follows: the programmable LMK61E2EVM, $US99; the pin-selectable differential LMK61PDEVM, $79; several fixed-frequency EVMs, $79.
• TI’s WEBENCH® Clock Architect tool simplifies designing with TI clock and timing devices. The tool can recommend a single- or multiple-device clock-tree solution from a broad database of devices to meet system requirements. It features a phased-locked loop (PLL) filter design and phase-noise simulation to allow designers to simulate and optimize clock-tree designs to meet their system needs.
• Engineers can search for solutions, get help, share knowledge and solve problems with fellow engineers and TI experts in the TI E2E^™Community Clocks and Timing forum.

Package, availability and pricing

LMK61xx oscillators are available today in a quad flat no-leads module (QFM) package. Price in 1,000-unit quantities for each device is listed below.

TI offers a broad timing portfolio that also includes ultra-low-additive jitter fan-out buffers like the LMK00301 universal differential buffer and the LMK00338 PCI Express Gen-3-compliant HCSL buffer, which complement the LMK61xx oscillator family.