With the largest portfolio of timing products in the industry, even at Renesas, we sometimes need some help finding the right product from our own catalog. Whenever we find ourselves in that situation, we actually go to our website to quickly figure it out. Here are some tips on how we use the tools available on renesas.com.
Site Search
If you have a partial idea of the part number, just start typing in the search bar (top right of this page). After a minimum of 3 characters, you’ll start seeing some options. This is very helpful if you don’t know the full part number or want to find out how many different package options it comes in.
You can also type in things like “Jitter Attenuator” into the search bar, and it will point you toward an appropriate product family page to find a jitter attenuator. Don’t worry too much about whether a part would be categorized as a clock generator, clock synthesizer, programmable clock, etc. Frankly, we have a hard time figuring this out. So we cheat and put the part in all categories that anyone would realistically try. So just click on something that sounds reasonable, and the part will probably be there.
Cross Reference Tool
Simply type in a competitor’s part number into the Cross Reference search bar, use the pull-down that appears, and see which Renesas parts can be used in its place. You will see a list of options with notations. Drop-in means a part is a full second source and can be dropped into the same socket and just work. Footprint means it will drop into the socket but may have some behavior differences. Functional means a part that will not fit into the socket as-is but performs a very similar function. Note that in this last case, the differences may only be a pin or two, so it may be possible to design a PCB that will accept our or competitor’s part with just one or two stuffing options for resistors or capacitors on the board.
Clocks and Timing Product Category Page
We’ve highlighted the key families in our timing portfolio at renesas.com/timing for quick reference. This is the place to start if you want to look at specific product categories – crystal oscillators, clock generators, jitter attenuators, or clock distribution, for instance. You’ll also find technical documentation and collateral covering general timing topics that may be of interest.
Parametric Search
Once you get to the product family page, for example, Jitter Attenuators with Frequency Translation, you will find a parametric search table. It has all sorts of criteria you can use to sort down to a reasonable number of parts to look at. We already pre-sort it a bit for you by showing Featured Parts at the top of the list. These are parts used by a broad range of customers, and so are likely to meet many people’s needs. You can dive deeper if you need both by unlocking some hidden columns of criteria and by clicking to display Additional Products.
This effort should bring you to just a few likely products to look at. Clicking on any of them will bring you to a page that is specific to the product. It will have all the information we think you may ask about when investigating or using that product, including videos explaining some of the tools for configuring or evaluating the product. We try to keep most of these videos under three minutes to get key points across without taking too much of your time.
Many of the items linked on a product page can be accessed in many different ways. For example, package drawings can be found directly from the search bar on the home page.
If all of this isn’t getting you what you need to know, visit our support page. If you choose to submit a contact form, one of our application specialists will typically get back to you within 24 hours (usually less).
With these tips, you can always find the right timing device for your system at renesas.com/timing.