NXP's Real-time Clock Chips Rated at 100nA

(Product News, 16 Jun 2008)

NXP Semiconductors has developed what is said to be the industry's best low-power performance real-time clock (RTC) chips with SPI bus interface, the PCF2123, which operates at a current of less than 100nA on a 1.5V power supply,

Available in a 3x3x1mm package, the real-time clock comes is suitable for battery operation and handheld applications to keep track of time, when the equipment is powered down. The small size and low-power requirement of the PCF2123 make it a good choice for applications including home-use medical devices such as blood pressure monitors, portable phones, PDAs and similar compact portable electronics products.

Features of the PCF2123 real-time-clock include a freely programmable alarm and timer function that gives designers the option to generate a wake-up signal on an interrupt pin. A programmable offset register also allows fine-tuning of the clock and frequency adjustment. The seconds, minutes, hours, days, weekdays, months and years registers are all coded in binary-coded decimal (BCD) format for easy conversion to decimal digits for printing or display and faster decimal calculations. Data is transferred serially via an SPI bus with a maximum data rate of 6.25Mbps.

Accuracy on the real-time clock is maintained by using a quartz reference. Each of these CMOS-based, real-time clock/calendars uses a low-power 32.768kHz quartz oscillator to provide clock and calendar functions. The calendar functions track year, month, date, and day with built-in century and leap-year flags. The tolerance of the quartz and the physical environment around the quartz crystal and oscillator circuit can be easily calibrated via the on-chip calibration register. No other external parts are required.

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