Low-Power Design

Santa Clara, CA – April 26, 2010—As Intel continues to extend its renewed embrace of all things embedded, enterprising companies continue to supply the missing bits. SpectraLinear Inc. has long supplied timing technology solutions for PC platforms. They’ve now included high-speed PCI Express (PCIe) support in their timing products, which certainly fills a need for new Intel embedded systems.

SpectraLinear, Inc. today announced a family of programmable clock generators designed to provide the timing and frequency requirements for the Tunnel Creek based systems including the complimentary I/O hubs such as Topcliff. The new programmable EProClock chips feature support for the Wake On LAN (WOL) function and the ability to expand on PCIe devices.

“The initial four devices in this family provide the designer with the options to use QFN packages for tiny module boards and have additional PCIe outputs for larger main system board designs with PCIe expansion slots,” said Elie Ayache, SpectraLinear’s V.P. of Marketing. “The wide diversity of applications in the embedded industry often dictates altering a basic design in order to adapt either to end product requirements or in order to differentiate features. SLI’s proprietary EProClock technology provides system engineers with the needed flexibility to adjust timing, frequency, output AC parameters, EMI attenuation and ultimately the ability to receive customized samples in a matter of days.”

With version 3.0 of PCIe providing up to one GB/sec per lane—or 16 GB/sec for a 16-lane slot—EMI control becomes a major problem, especially on longer traces. Ayache told Low-Power Design that programmable skew is especially critical when you’re running several PCIe lanes around a board.

In order to support the various requirements of the Tunnel Creek based platforms, the first four EProClock core devices offer a mixture of options ranging from the number of CPU and PCIe clock outputs to the type of packaging:

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