Hello to our readers.  Hopefully you survived Black Friday with life and limbs intact, and thanks for visiting amongst the frantic Amazon.com Cyber Monday discount shopping (here’s a couple of gift idea: the VEE-enabled Galaxy Tab 3.0 or the iPico projector for iPhone).

Through the ‘submit a question’ link to the right, we received a few questions from an avid reader that I wanted to take a second to address here on the QuickLogic HotSpots…

What voltages do QUIK’s devices typically run at?

>>>Depending on the device and function, QuickLogic’s CSSP devices will generally run at 1.2, 1.8, and/or 3.3V (can be more than 1)

Is it different for tablets or smartphones?

>>>Typically no.  Tablets and smartphones are very, very similar in internal design.

Would BX/VX run at the same voltages as the S1?

>>>The core voltage is the same (1.2V).  However, the VX/BX can contain MIPI, RGB, and LVDS, which can operate at 1.8 and 3.3V.   The I/O on the S1 can be configured to run anywhere from 1.8 or 3.3V.

I’m not an engineer, but from my reading, I saw typical voltages of 3.3, 1.8 or 1.2[V] in mobile devices.

>>>Correct.  You can usually find these voltages supplied on the system board.

Anyway, how do voltage levels impact your devices? 

>>>We need certain voltages to insure our devices function, which are mostly process-dependent.  In all of our ArcticLink 3 devices (whether VX, BX, or Sensor Hub S1), we require 1.2V to support our core functions, with other voltages required for different functions (e.g, 3.3V for LVDS, 1.8V for RGB, 1.8V for I/O).  If the customer has other needs, we can usually accommodate that using programmable fabric (if available) on the device through a function called ‘level shifting’, which is essentially changing a signal of 1 voltage to another.

Do you have to design-in multiple supported voltage levels?

>>>This is generally a combination of process node and customer design considerations.  Certainly life would be easier on system designers if everything worked at the same voltages, but unfortunately that isn’t possible with the various generations of process nodes and their resulting core voltage requirements.  We occasionally have customers who ask us for voltages that are not standard; as I mentioned, we often can accommodate that through ‘level shifting’ in our fabric.