Product category:
Communications ICs (Wireless)
News Release from: Oki Electric | Subject: ML6191
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 14 April 2004
Chip keeps clocks in tune
The ML6191 is the industry's first single-chip LSI for radio-controlled clocks, combining signal receiver, decoder and real-time-clock functions onto a single chip.
The ML6191 is the industry's first single-chip LSI for radio-controlled clocks, combining signal receiver, decoder and real-time-clock (RTC) functions onto a single chip This reduces the square size of the LSI as well as power consumption, which enables manufactures to develop radio-controlled clocks into embedded equipment in a low cost and in a short period of time
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 10 Apr 2002 at 8.00am (UK)
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"We are proud to announce the industry's first single chip LSI for radio controlled clocks, based on Japan's long-wave standard time code", said Akira Kamo, President of the Silicon Solutions Company at Oki Electric.
"With this LSI, our customers who manufacture radio controlled clock embedded equipment can benefit a large amount because the single chip significantly reduces cost and development time for such equipment".
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Radio-controlled clocks are in high demand as they can adjust time by standard time code compared with regular clocks that easily lose their accuracy.
The radio-controlled clocks are mostly composed of several LSIs, an antenna, and a crystal resonator.
The LSIs include a signal receiver LSI based on an analogue circuit, a decoder LSI and an RTC LSI both based on a digital circuit.
In addition to these three LSIs, decoder software is needed to extract time from the received signal when developing a radio-controlled clock.
Adjustments between the signal receiver LSI and the antenna and crystal resonator are also necessary, which consumes time and increases costs of development.
Conventional analogue circuits are based on bipolar processes, whereas digital circuits are based on CMOS processes.
Because of the different process technologies, it has been difficult to produce LSIs for radio-controlled clocks on a single chip.
However, in Oki's ML6191, the signal receiver LSI, decoder LSI, and RTC LSI are manufactured on SOI (silicon on insulator)-CMOS process technology, a technology that stands out in mixing analogue and digital circuitry.
Combining the functions onto a single chip eliminates the decoder software development and reduces the square size and power consumption.
In addition, by using an antenna and a crystal resonator recommended by Oki, manufactures can easily adjust these components to the ML6191.
Oki became the first in the industry to successfully create an LSI with a receiver function, decoder function and real time clock function all on a single chip, using its abundant track records of digital/analogue design technology, decoding technology, and adopting SOI-CMOS process technology.
This chip can be used as an RTC LSI with an automatic time adjusting function and is suitable for use in general appliances including audiovisual equipment, home appliances, PCs and car clocks.
With Oki's assets in designing LSIs and its SOI-CMOS process technology, the company plans to integrate remote control functions, sensor control functions and various interface functions into a single chip to enhance its product lineup.
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