New Industry Products

California Micro Devices Unveils New XtremeESD™ Protection Devices

January 06, 2008 by Jeff Shepard

California Micro Devices unveiled its XtremeESD, a new family of protection devices developed with what is described as a radically new architecture designed to meet today’s most challenging ESD requirements.

The first XtremeESD product, the CM1231-02SO, uses CMD’s new Picoguard XP™ architecture. The Picoguard XP architecture is a double clamping architecture that integrates multiple stages of ESD protection into a single device. This architecture provides protection for sensitive high speed ICs by significantly reducing the clamping voltage and the amount of residual current that passes through to the protected ASIC.

As silicon manufacturing geometries shrink, integrated circuits are becoming increasingly susceptible to ESD damage. According to the company, traditional ESD protection architectures including single stage, dual rail clamp diode arrays are no longer adequate to protect the latest system ICs. The voltage and residual current levels that pass through them will cause gate oxide failures and junction burnout for system ICs designed in the latest silicon processes. CMD has developed the XtremeESD family of devices, including the new PicoGuard XP, to address these new requirements.

"The critical factor in improving ESD protection is reducing the residual current and clamping voltage seen by the system IC during an ESD strike," stated Joe Salvador , Director of Marketing for Digital Consumer and Computing Products at California Micro Devices. "CMD’s newly developed PicoGuard XP architecture significantly reduces both the residual current and the clamping voltage, while simultaneously preserving the signal integrity of high speed data. It is an ideal solution for protecting sensitive USB , HDMI™ and DisplayPort™ data interfaces."

The PicoGuard XP architecture uses a dual stage design that places two ESD devices and a resistor in series within the same package. The first ESD circuit absorbs the largest portion of the strike, while the second provides additional clamping and a secondary shunt path to steer current away from the system IC being protected.

The CM1231-02S0 is available in a SOT23-6 package to protect two data lines. It is currently in full production, and is priced at $0.38 each at 1,000 units.