This workshop will discuss two quite different A/D converter architectures, namely sigma-delta converters and the employment of this architecture for high-speed designs, as well as two of the most promising Nyquist-rate converter architectures available today, which are the pipelined architecture and folding and interpolating converters. 

The discussion of the different converter types starts with the basic principles of the architecture. The design process is described with special emphasis on achieving high accuracy, high speed and low power consumption. The presentations also include actual design examples.

After repeating the most important specifications of Nyquist A/D converters, 
the talk concentrates on converter architectures. Although the flash converter 
achieves unmatched conversion speed, its main disadvantage is the exponential 
growth of power and area consumption with increased number of bits. Two 
alternative architectures are therefore discussed which play a major role in 
today's high-speed A/D converter development: the pipelined architecture on the 
one hand and the folding and interpolating type on the other.

Th discussion begins with a stroll through architectures of important building 
blocks such as the A/D subconverter, the D/A converter and the sample-and-hold 
stage. Some time is spent on the residue mechanism which is the key in 
understanding the digital error correction algorithm as well as other sources 
of error that affect linearity. The talk is rounded off by the presentation of 
the design of a 5 Msample/s 13-bit A/D converter.