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.