DAC/ADC/FPGA Chip Manufacturers

[mansr]

I'll need some help understanding FPGA DAC implementations then. Here's a high-quality pic of the Hugo 2 board.

How/where is the D/A happening?

It's probably done by that smattering of small chips between the FPGA and the crystal. It's impossible to make out what they are, but my guess would be standard digital parts (gates, flip-flops) forming a switched array of current sources. That would make it a semi-discrete implementation of what is usually done on a single chip.

 

[pozz]

I suggest you stick with the company at time of manufacture to ensure the data will be static over time. You don't want to be chasing your tail if a company becomes acquired or changes its name in the future. I also think this would better align with the spec sheets of the devices.

The main issue with this is that manufacturers, for reasons I can't fathom, refuse to list the date of introduction to the market in almost all cases on their website or manuals. Establishing when a certain model came to market is hard work.

 

[pozz]

The ultimate question is: does it make sense to list chips for discrete DACs or is that inaccurate from the designer's perspective? Like the ADSP-21489 for the Mola Mola DAC.

 

[mansr]

The ultimate question is: does it make sense to list chips for discrete DACs or is that inaccurate from the designer's perspective? Like the ADSP-21489 for the Mola Mola DAC.

That's a generic DSP chip. The actual conversion is, again, done by semi-discrete circuitry.

If this is for a "DAC chip" table column, I'd file all these under some general "other" or "custom" label.

 

[Racheski]

The main issue with this is that manufacturers, for reasons I can't fathom, refuse to list the date of introduction to the market in almost all cases on their website or manuals. Establishing when a certain model came to market is hard work.

Gotcha, my suggestion was more in the spirit of whatever the spec says today keep it that way.

 

[pozz]

Gotcha, my suggestion was more in the spirit of whatever the spec says today keep it that way.

I would prefer to do it the way you suggested, for the record. Short of contacting the manufacturers for every entry I don't know how to do it.

 

[pozz]

@Killingbeans Does the revised list in my first post make sense? I get that some of the DAC/ADC manufacturers also make other generic chips. But for our purposes here, does it work?

 

[Killingbeans]

The ultimate question is: does it make sense to list chips for discrete DACs or is that inaccurate from the designer's perspective?

I think mansr has the best idea. R2R DACs also use FPGAs, just saying...

 

[Killingbeans]

@Killingbeans Does the revised list in my first post make sense? I get that some of the DAC/ADC manufacturers also make other generic chips. But for our purposes here, does it work?

Yes. It makes sense to me at least. Maybe it should be 'Microcontroller/FPGA Companies'.

 

[mansr]

Conextant

Conexant

Amtel

Atmel

 

[muslhead]

An FPGA is still a fully digital device. When used in DAC designs, they generally do the digital interpolation and perhaps other signal processing. The D/A conversion is done elsewhere.

Not true. FPGAs are nothing but logic transistors. I was a part of a company creating analog cores for fpgas. so they are not digitial only.
The fact is the op has it all wrong adding fpga companies on the list. They are programmable logic and can be whatever you want them to be, depending upon your logic programming skills. That being said they have hundreds if not 1000s of cores that are preprogramed and built. All you have to do is plop them in your circuit and use them as a part of your circuit. No one, will buy an fpga and make it only a std microcontroller as the standard product implementation (such as atmels for example) will be much cheaper. If you are going to customize it then an fpga is the easiest and cheapest path. Spent 20 years either at or competitors of many of the companies listed by the op

 

[NTK]

You may want to add Qualcomm. Qualcomm doesn't seem to sell a lot of chips to "audio product" manufacturers, but they do have a portfolio of audio products. Qualcomm acquired Cambridge Silicon Radio (CSR) in 2015. The "Direct Digital Feedback Amplifier" (DDFA) technology NAD used for its M32 amplifier (and several from other companies) was licensed from CSR.
https://www.qualcomm.com/news/releases/2015/08/13/qualcomm-completes-24-billion-acquisition-csr
https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...-ddfa-direct-digital-feedback-amplifier.9413/
https://www.qualcomm.com/media/documents/files/csra6620-ddfa-evaluation-kit-product-brief.pdf

I also don't think Qualcomm makes/sells standalone ADC/DAC chips, but a number of their products include integrated ADC/DAC.
For example: https://www.qualcomm.com/products/wcd9370

 

[mansr]

Not true. FPGAs are nothing but logic transistors. I was a part of a company creating analog cores for fpgas. so they are not digitial only.

OK, some of them have a few analogue-ish blocks like communication phys. You can't program them to be arbitrary analogue circuits. If I'm wrong and such a device exists, I want one.

 

[pozz]

Not true. FPGAs are nothing but logic transistors. I was a part of a company creating analog cores for fpgas. so they are not digitial only.
The fact is the op has it all wrong adding fpga companies on the list. They are programmable logic and can be whatever you want them to be, depending upon your logic programming skills. That being said they have hundreds if not 1000s of cores that are preprogramed and built. All you have to do is plop them in your circuit and use them as a part of your circuit. No one, will buy an fpga and make it only a std microcontroller as the standard product implementation (such as atmels for example) will be much cheaper. If you are going to customize it then an fpga is the easiest and cheapest path. Spent 20 years either at or competitors of many of the companies listed by the op

Not questioning your expertise, but you may have misunderstand the purpose of the thread. I'm putting this list together for sorting in our interactive table. All of the entries are linked to companies producing the chips found in the audio gear measured here.

The rest of the thread was figuring out the best, most correct way to populate the database given the different existing DAC architectures.

 

[muslhead]

Not questioning your expertise, but you may have misunderstand the purpose of the thread. I

]
Probably, being one for accuracy i was just trying to insure the list is accurately represented. If what you have list incorrectly (xilinx is no more a microcontroller company as it is an op amp company even though they have op amps as logic cores) is not relative to your purpose, please ignore me.

 

[MC_RME]

Is there any proof to this extraordinary definition of what Xilinx is and manufactures? Didn't find one.

 

[Killingbeans]

What definition? So far they've been defined as a manufacturer of FPGAs. That's not wrong, is it?

Or is it because the '/' can be seen as "both" in stead of "either-or"?

 

[mansr]

What definition? So far they've been defined as a manufacturer of FPGAs. That's not wrong, is it?

Or is it because the '/' can be seen as "both" in stead of "either-or"?

Xilinx makes FPGA chips, some of them (the Zynq series) including ARM CPU cores and everything else you'd expect from a system on chip.

 

[Killingbeans]

Honestly I don't think neither microcontrollers nor FPGAs belong on this list. Especially microcontrollers, since they have zero involvement in the specific task of D/A or A/D conversion.

DACs like those from Chord or Mola Mola should not be considered as chip-based devices, but in stead as "custom/discrete".

If microcontrollers makes the cut, then it sort of opens the door for any kind of chip that holds more than a single discete component.

 

[miero]

A special category is needed for a DAC from Mola Mola:
- https://www.mola-mola.nl/dac.php

It uses ADI SHARC audio processors (DSP):
- https://www.analog.com/en/products/...ocessors-dsp/sharc-audio-processors-socs.html