In preparing for this year’s SNUG (Synopsys Users Group) tutorial in San Jose, I learnt that Chuck Berry’s first hit “Maybelline” used a technique called valve overdrive that gave his electric guitar a warm distorted feeling. He used small amplifiers which were easily overdriven. Distortion is just one of the topics that I will cover in my tutorial “A Thumbs Guide to Specifying and Understanding System Trade-Offs for Data Converter IP”. Specifying an ADC (analog to digital converter) to meet a particular distortion target is actually quite difficult, because it relates to the effective number of bits (ENOB) and differential and integral non-linearities, DNL & INL respectively. This is in contrast to specifying an ADC to meet a particular signal to noise ratio (SNR) – this is relatively easy because it is directly related to the number of bits and the over-sampling ratio.

Having presented the key specifications of data converters that are integrated into SoC applications such as audio CODECS, video front ends and advanced communication systems, I will give practical examples and will illustrate the trade-offs that impact system performance in terms of power, resolution, input bandwidth and sampling rate.

Hope to see you there! Registration details can be found on: http://www.synopsys.com/Community/SNUG/SanJose/Pages/default.aspx