APT TECHNOLOGY

Over the last two decades, analog signal processing has undergone a quiet renaissance as innovations continue to improve manufacturability, programmability and reliability. Building on this foundation of continual improvements to analog technology, GTronix has created a novel and proprietary ‘smart analog’ core competency known as APT™ Technology — a new and fresh approach to creating analog ICs for sensory processing.

The underlying breakthrough for APT Technology is in the very precise control of floating gate programming. The GTronix technologists found that by precisely and reliably controlling the charge on the floating gate, new circuits become practical, changing the design paradigm in analog signal processing

The APT Technology architecture leverages conventional floating gates in proprietary analog circuits to uniquely implement adaptive analog signal processing functions. Examples include filters, multipliers and other linear transforms. These circuits typically operate at sub-threshold levels, thereby minimizing power consumption and die size. For example, the core signal processing function, the MAC (multiply-accumulate), can be implemented with 900X fewer transistors than a comparable digital implementation. Such elementary signal processing functions can be combined into higher level signal processing blocks, such as filter-banks, vector matrix multipliers and adaptive filters. High level algorithms are in turn implemented using the signal processing blocks. Digital circuitry can also be incorporated to complete sensor processing or digital interface if required.

GTronix’s APT Technology — Smart Analog for Sensory Processing — is poised to revolutionize real-world signal processing in portable consumer electronics.