March 13, 2012 -- As a number of Texas Instruments Graychip (GC) range of devices transition to "Not Recommended" for new designs and "Obsolete" status, RF Engines, Ltd. (RFEL) has developed specific IP to emulate the signal processing functionality of these devices and provide an upgrade path to designs originally built upon them.

Using specifically designed sub-modules, a channelizer design can be realized on an FPGA platform, that offers higher performance, greater customization options and a lower price than the increasingly hard-to-obtain mature Graychip devices.

"Manufacturers are coming to the stage of designing the next generation of their products only to find that a key component they had used, such as the TI Graychip GC1012A has become obsolete, and the GC1012B wideband DDC is 'not recommended' for new designs, hard to obtain and expensive at around $240 each," explained Dr. Alex Kuhrt, RFEL's CEO. "At the request of customers, we have created emulations of the DDC functionality, using our DSP technology that runs on a low-cost FPGA part and delivers improved performance and lower system costs, saving a massive 75% on the effective unit cost."

The designs are not pin-for-pin replacements, but, as companies design new PCB layouts for their next generation of products, it is a straight-forward process to take advantage of the increased performance, lower power consumption and extended features, such as support for fractional decimation factors up to 16,384 as standard, a capability not even offered by many of the latest DDC chips.