International Business Machines Corporation

Insyte Innovation Systems

Insyte Innovative Systems & Technology Corporation

Parker A Robinson

Dennis R Whittaker

James W Wall

Alvin Jose Joseph

Jeffrey Bowman Johnson

Raminderpal Singh

An improved analog to digital converter is disclosed incorporating a flash converter and a charge-sharing pipelined chain converter. The invention incorporates three important circuits including a novel voltage reference steering circuit, a novel high performance low power comparator circuit and a novel digital calibration for compensation circuit. The low power is accomplished by turning on compare circuits only when comparing (controlled by timing circuits that are common to all comparators) and by a low power RAM that properly aligns the converted data. The converter operates in a pipelined manor and requires multiple sample and hold circuits for the compare circuits. The improved analog to digital converter incorporates test and calibration to compensate for variations experience during operation and manufacture of the improved analog to digital converter.

Low power analog to digital converter

An integrated circuit having structure for isolating circuit sections having at least one differing characteristic. The structure includes a chip guard ring for each circuit section having the at least one differing characteristic. Providing multiple chip guard rings allows for isolation of circuit sections and prevention of ionic contamination, but without increased expense and size. In addition, it is practicable with any IC. The invention also may include an interconnect for electrical connectivity about a chip guard ring.

Multiple chip guard rings for integrated circuit and chip guard ring interconnect

Low power, scalable analog to digital converter having circuit for compensating system non-linearity

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Clearwater, FL, United States of America

Parker A Robinson