The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 23, 2013
Filed:
Feb. 15, 2011
Lawrence Chi Fung Cheng, San Jose, CA (US);
Lawrence Chi Fung Cheng, San Jose, CA (US);
Credo Semiconductor (Hong Kong) Limited, Hong Kong, HK;
Abstract
Disclosed is at least one flash analog-to-digital converter embodiment having a linear voltage ladder, a set of comparators each of which is coupled to one or more operational amplifiers by a sampling switch. Each of the sampling switches samples the comparator output, using the parasitic capacitance of the operational amplifier to hold the voltage. The sampling switches may be single transistors. Some embodiments further include, for each comparator, multiple operational amplifiers each of which drives a binary latch via a gating switch. The gating switches operate in sequence to distribute sequential samples to different latches. At least some embodiments of the flash converter further include an automatic gain control (AGC) that has both differential input terminals and differential output terminals. In such embodiments the comparators compare the differential output of the AGC to a differential reference voltage, and may further provide the result as a differential signal.