Diodes Incorporated announced a new addition to its family of low voltage level translators, offering simple and autonomous bidirectional operation. The PI4GTL2002 is a 2-bit level shifter designed to translate signals conditioned for one voltage level to signals at a higher or lower voltage, such as gunner transceiver logic (GTL) or GTL+ to LVTTL/TTL. As leading processor manufacturers continue to include GTL+ interfaces in their products, the need for high performance level translators is increasing in applications such as server/data centers and networking. The PI4GTL2002 meets that demand with the added benefit of not imposing the need for directional control.
The open-drain design of the PI4GTL2002 means the device can translate voltage levels in either direction without incurring the design complexity or performance penalty of a dedicated direction control signal. The device operates in either direction, shifting between 0.8 V and 5 V (CMOS), with less than 1.5 ns propagation delay between inputs and outputs. As such, the PI4GTL2002 can support a number of use cases, including standard and fast mode I2C.
The NMOS-based pass transistors in the design use a common gate to enable bidirectional operation, with reference voltages for each of the two signals. This enables the design team to apply a different voltage to either side of the device, allowing voltage translation between signals ranging from 0.8 V to 5 V.
 |
| Typical Application Circuit. |
The pin-out of the PI4GTL2002 follows a convenient flow-through design, making PCB layout simpler. A low input and output capacitance keeps the propagation delay low, while the device also features an on-resistance of just 3.5 Ω to minimize signal distortion.
The PI4GTL2002UEX is available in the U-QFN package, the PI4GTL2002WEX W-QFN package, and the PI4GTL2002XTEX in the XT-QFN package.
