Intersil Corporation has introduced the ISL88694 SMBus accelerator. A dual active pull-up bus terminator, the ISL88694 is designed to improve data transmission speed and reliability on SMBus or similar 2-wire serial bus interfaces such as I2C. It permits operation of the bus at frequencies of up to 100 kHz despite the capacitive loads of multiple devices and/or long PC board traces.
Pull-up resistors are used to connect each bus line to a positive supply voltage such that both clock and data lines are high when the bus is free. However, using simple pull-up resistors on the clock and data lines becomes problematic if there are long signal lines or many devices connected to the bus. In such cases, the combined capacitance of the bus then increases the rise time on the signal to such an extent that bus communication becomes unreliable or fails to meet the bus timing specifications.
According to Intersil the key features of ISL88694 are pin-for-pin compatible with the LTC1694 with 8 kV ESD protection; provides active termination for bus lines; enhances system bus signal rise time; improves data transmission reliability; increases bus capacity while guaranteeing data integrity; 2-wire SMBus and I2C compatible; automatic power-saving standby mode and small 5-lead SOT23 package.
The ISL88694 is now available in 5-lead SOT23 packaging for a price of $1.80 in 1,000 unit quantities.
Intersil :
www.intersil.com
