Clock management fanout buffer line expanded to seven new devices

Microsemi Corporation announced four new miClockBuffer products and three new miSmartBuffer products in its portfolio of clock management fanout buffers. The ZL40230, ZL30235 and ZL30240 miSmartBuffer and ZL40231, ZL40234,  ZL40241 and ZL40260 miClockBufferdevices further expand Microsemi’s broad lineup of high performance products targeted to a variety of applications within the communications, data center and enterprise markets.

The ZL40231, ZL40234, ZL40241 and ZL40260 provide customers with single-ended and differential fanout buffers with hardware control pins, while the ZL40230, ZL40235 and ZL40240 additions to the miSmartBuffer lineup offer highly flexible single-ended and differential outputs (I/Os) and per output control through a serial port. The new devices augment Microsemi’s product family of traditional differential buffers and miSmartBuffers to complete customers’ clock trees by offering expanded options and features including up to 10 differential outputs, per output and output bank control, ultra-low additive jitter and power supply noise suppression.  

“The introduction of our new miClockBuffer and miSmartBuffer devices not only expands our broad portfolio of robust clock management solutions, but also advances Microsemi’s ability to secure a larger share of board real estate in these growth markets,” said Maamoun Seido, vice president and business unit manager of Microsemi’s timing products. “Combining the attractive new features of these products with Microsemi’s miClockSynth™ clock synthesizers enables designers to create larger clock trees or simplify small clock trees, leading to significant cost savings for our communications, enterprise and data center customers.”

According to a new forecast from the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Quarterly Cloud IT Infrastructure Tracker, spending on off-premises cloud IT infrastructure will experience a five-year compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 14.2 percent, reaching $48.1 billion in 2020. Public cloud data centers will account for nearly 81 percent of this amount. Microsemi’s new clock management products, as well as the entire buffer portfolio, cater to this growing demand, targeting a wide variety of applications including enterprise switches and routers, peripheral component interconnect express (PCIe), video, storage systems, storage servers, wireless base stations, wireless backhaul, access infrastructure and 1G/2.5G/10G/25G/40G/25G/100G Ethernet. The new devices are also well-suited to applications such as industrial and factory automation.

Microsemi’s seven new devices offer pin compatible variants with other vendor products, ensuring ease of design and saving additional costs for customers. Additional key features of the new miClockBuffer products include:

• Up to three inputs/crystal input/inverted micra/high-speed crystal
• Up to 10 low-voltage positive-referenced emitter coupled logic (LVPECL)/low-voltage differential signals (LVDS)/high-speed current steering logic (HCSL)
• 10 low voltage complementary metal oxide semiconductor (LVCMOS) only outputs
• Low skew, and ultra-low additive jitter of 30 fs RMS (12kHz to 20 mHz)
• Hardware control pins

The new miSmartBuffer devices also add in features such as:

• Serial port interface
• Integer dividers on the LVCMOS outputs
• Software control of outputs
• Ultra-low additive jitter of 30 fs RMS (12kHz to 20 mHz)

Microsemi’s ZL40230, ZL40231, ZL40234, ZL40235, ZL40240, ZL40241 and ZL40260 miClockBuffer and miSmartBuffer products are available now, with additional devices from the product family planned for release in the coming months.