National Semiconductor Corporation has introduced two four-channel low-voltage differential signaling (LVDS) buffer-repeaters, DS15BR400 and DS15BR401. The devices operate from zero to 2.0 Gb/s and feature 14 ps of total jitter at 1.5 Gb/s data rates plus 15 kV of ESD protection for FPGAs, ASICs and other onboard components.

Both parts are said to provide the features needed to design mainstream LVDS multicards or multiboxes in automotive and other applications. They include configurable pre-emphasis and are suited for delivering clean LVDS signals across cables and backplanes.

Offered in both 32-pin LLP and 48-pin TQFP packages, the DS15BR400 drives up to four LVDS clock and/or data channels over common backplanes or cable configurations. Its wide differential input range allows the device to be interfaced easily to LVDS, low-voltage positive emitter-coupled logic (LVPECL), or current-mode logic (CML) input levels, and output levels are fully LVDS compliant. Configurable output pre-emphasis allows designers to overdrive the outputs to compensate for a lossy interconnect. In power-sensitive applications, the power-down per channel mode is said to be useful in minimizing power consumption when all four channels of a single device are not active, as in redundancy applications.

The DS15BR400 has input and output terminations integrated to save board space and maximize signal conditioning. The DS15BR401 has the same features and packaging options as the DS15BR400, but it does not include the integrated receiver termination, which allows it to be used as a multidrop receiver.