Elantec's Low-Power IC for CD-R/R/W

A few years ago, when DVD burners looked they were going to be the next big thing, it seemed like CD burners were going to go the way of the Beta video recorder, the Newton, and Zip drives. DVD-R/RW, however has mysteriously managed to avoid becoming affordable, and ever faster and smaller CD burners continue to hit the market. Elantec Semiconductor is now shipping a new laser driver IC intended to provide faster CD read/write (R/W) speeds and more compact disk drive designs. The EL6145C is pin-compatible and functionally compatible with Elantec's EL6245C. It has one 250mA output current write channel to enable driving the higher power 780 nanometer lasers required to achieve 32X-and-greater CD-R speeds, and has the lower power consumption required by the new slim-line drives found in small form factor PC desktops and PC notebooks. The EL6145C integrates the automatic power control (APC) amplifier and the high frequency modulator (HFM) oscillator along with the three current channels needed for compliance with the Orange Specification Standard for CD-R and CD-R/W write strategy formats. The company says that integrating the HFM oscillator helps to reduce laser read noise, eliminating the need for an external oscillator-enable signal. The price for the EL6145C in a 16-pin QSOP package is $2.50 each for quantities of 10,000-units or more. Samples are available now with production lead times of eight to ten weeks.