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SiTime: Custom frequencies in Minutes Vs Weeks

In the world of rapid development one area that is difficult to speed up is the area of custom crystals and oscillators.

Historically the lead times on these have been between 8 and 16 weeks, even for samples.  Chrystals based oscillators just take a long time to grind down and tune.

That reality of engineering has changed with SiTime.  They offer some very appealing options when it comes to custom frequencies, and even offer a programmer that allows a one time programming of the oscillators frequency in minutes.  In custom RF designs we often require custom frequencies.  Having the ability a few yourself for the first prototype pass is hugh, especially when turn around times are tight.

Even for the higher accuracy TCXO’s, and Super-TCXO families we’ve where self programming isn’t an option we have found sample requests from SiTime are usually filled within a couple of days vs weeks.

SiTime is obviously targeting wearables and other ultra-small package, so their package selection, especially on their 32.768 KHz products are very small for hand re-works.  But if you want small this is an advantage.  I just wished they offered these in a couple of larger sizes.  Personally I would love to see every oscillator family in the 3.2×2.5 package.  That way we would only have to support one footprint regardless of frequency and would just make it a non issue.

The Programmer is not a production programmer, but for the first 5 boards, it works well.  We have had good success with it and it’s nice at the prototype stage to be able to due it with out waiting for the mail.