Avago Technologies announced it is shipping production volumes of 12- and 16-bit quadrature decoder/counter interface ICs to manufacturers of consumer, office and industrial products. Major applications for these ICs include home appliances, printers, fax machines, photo copiers, test and measurement equipment, and servo and stepper motors. The devices are offered in several package options, including RoHS-compliant lead-free, plastic dual-inline packages (PDIP).

The Avago HCTL-20xx series ICs feature 14-MHz clock speed and are designed to improve system performance in digital closed loop motion control systems and digital data input systems by shifting time-intensive quadrature decoder functions from software on a microprocessor to a cost-effective hardware solution. The ICs are used to interface rotary or linear quadrature incremental encoders to microprocessors and to interface digital potentiometers to digital data input buses.

“The new HCTL-20xx series ICs are drop-in replacements for our popular HCTL-2000, HCTL-2016 and HCTL-2020 devices,” said Chong Khin Mien, vice president for the Motion Control Products Division at Avago Technologies. “They offer much higher frequency for improved system performance and are available in environmental friendly RoHS-compliant packages.”

The HCTL-20xx series ICs include quadrature decoder logic, a binary up/down state counter, and an 8-bit bus interface. The use of Schmitt-triggered CMOS inputs and input noise filters provides reliable operation in noisy environments.

The ICs are available in the following versions:

o The HCTL-2001-A00 is a 12-bit counter/quadrature decoder available in a low-profile dual-inline on PCB package (LP) and in a lead-free PDIP.

o The HCTL-2017-A00 is a 16-bit counter/quadrature decoder available in the LP package, plastic leaded chip carrier (PLCC) and lead-free PDIP.

o The HCTL-2021-A00 is a 16-bit counter/quadrature decoder available in the LP, PLCC, and lead-free PDIP packages. It provides quadrature decoder output signals and a cascading capability that allows for position reads of more than 2 bytes by latching all the bytes and then reading the bytes sequentially over the 8-bit bus. This permits the HCTL-2021 to interface with many standard computer ICs.