A 500-MHz 8-bit D/A converter

An ultrafast monolithic 8-bit DAC is designed and fabricated. To realize this DAC, a new high-speed conversion technique, referred to as the data multiplexing method, and a variation of the segmented DAC (J.A. Shoeff, 1979) for low glitch are developed. The DAC is fabricated with shallow-groove-isolated 3-/spl mu/m VLSI technology with peak f/SUB T/'s of 4.5 GHz. An experimental 8-bit DAC features a conversion rate of over 500 MHz, a full-scale settling time to 1% of 2 ns, rise/fall times of 0.6 ns, and a glitch energy of 20 ps-V without input latches or a deglitcher.