Mindspeed Technologies have announced a multi-channel, multi-rate, low-power chipset for serial digital interface (SDI) applications. Mindspeed’s new offering provides a complete serial link solution for 3G/HD/SD-SDI equipment with over 70% power savings compared to existing solutions.
The chipset, available from Caelera , consists of a dual cable equaliser, a quad video reclocker and a dual cable driver. It features trace equalisation and output de-emphasis, providing unparalleled analogue performance for large system designs and complements the company’s existing, crosspoint portfolio.
According to Kurt Bush, Senior Vice-President and General Manager, Mindspeed, Mindspeed have utilised their core strengths of integration, signal integrity and low power design to provide a solution for the challenges faced by equipment designers in the broadcast industry. With these multi-channel devices, they offer the customers robust functionality and high performance in a fraction of the area and power, helping to achieve the density and power consumption requirements of large systems. By integrating compensation for trace losses, they enable the design of robust 3G-SDI systems, without the added complexity and cost of external components.
In the broadcast market, there is a trend towards larger systems with more SDI ports. Often, the physical size of the equipment does not scale with port count, leaving the system designers with the conundrum of achieving more SDI input/output ports in the same space. Mindspeed’s multi-channel devices are the ideal solution to address this problem.
Housed in the industry standard quad flat no-lead (QFN) packages, the new devices help to realise a Society of Motion Picture and Television Engineers (SMPTE) compliant SDI port in a fraction of the space previously possible. The devices also feature an integrated crosspoint switch, eliminating the need for additional multiplexers and switches on the board, as well as internal supply regulators and input/output termination, further reducing the need for external components. These devices help to achieve an area reduction of 30% or greater compared to designs realised with legacy solutions.
The designers of broadcast equipment should tackle the obstacles of heat dissipation and high operating power consumption. Furthermore, the desire to deliver environmentally friendly equipment is driving the need for systems with lower operating power consumption. Mindspeed’s low power SDI products are the first of their kind, implemented entirely in deep sub-micron complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS), providing unprecedented power savings to the designers.
The quad reclocker consumes 495mW when all four channels are active, which is comparable to the power dissipation of the single-channel reclockers available. At 160mW and 80mW respectively, the dual cable equaliser and cable driver consume two-thirds less power per channel than existing devices. Collectively, the new SDI chipset from Mindspeed offers designers greater than 70% power reduction.
In order to achieve robust system operation at the higher data rate necessary for 3G-SDI, many designers have resorted to utilising additional components to compensate for signal degradations and losses across the board. The external compensation increases the design cost and complexity, while occupying valuable board real estate.
Mindspeed’s devices ease signal integrity concerns as in addition to providing exceptional analogue performance, they also include compensation for trace losses. The dual equaliser comes equipped with de-emphasis at both outputs, while the dual cable driver features input trace equalisation for up to 40” of FR4 trace at both inputs. The quad reclocker provides trace equalisation at the inputs and de-emphasis at the outputs, enabling high speed transmission across 40” of FR4 trace and two connectors. Using Mindspeed’s products, designers are able to realise a robust 3G-SDI system simply and cost effectively.
The new SDI chipset from Mindspeed is compliant with SMPTE standards defined for operation at SD-SDI (SMPTE 259M-C), HD-SDI (SMPTE 292M), and 3GSDI (SMPTE 424M). These devices are suitable for the design of SDI equipment, such as distribution amplifiers, video routing switchers, video production switchers, multiviewers, monitors and cameras.
The dual cable equaliser, M21524, provides adaptive, low noise, high gain equalisation for two 75Ω coaxial cables at SDI data rates from 143Mbps to 2.97Gbps. It also features a 2x2 crosspoint switch allowing any input to be routed to either output. This device is capable of compensating for losses accumulated across cable lengths for up to 140m when operating at 2.97Gbps. M21355, the quad reclocker, features automatic rate detect (ARD) circuitry, and a 16x4 crosspoint switch at the input. It operates at SDI data rates ranging from 270Mbps to 2970Mbps.
M21355 has an input jitter tolerance (IJT) of greater than 0.6 unit intervals (UI) and can provide re-timed serial outputs with low output jitter. The quad reclocker requires a single, external, 27MHz crystal, which is used as the reference clock for all four channels. M21528, the dual cable driver, can drive 2, unipolar, pairs of 75Ω coaxial cables, or 50Ω equivalent loads, at SDI data rates from 143Mbps to 2.97Gbps. Similar to the equaliser, this device also features an integrated 2x2 crosspoint switch. M21528 is capable of outputting SDI signals with jitter values of less than 17ps p–p, when operating at 2.97Gbps.