The most recent 8-pin, 12-bit A/D converters that Burr-
Brown has introduced to the market are advertised as high
speed, micro power, low priced sampling SAR devices.
During product development and the initial introduction
period, the engineering effort was placed on optimizing the
combination of 12 bits with high speed, low power and low
cost. Burr-Brown Applications has revisited these converters
to find that the claims of high speed and micro power at
12 bits are only part of the story. If power savings is a
priority and fewer bits are tolerable in the application, these
parts can be operated at much higher speeds and with
considerably lower power dissipation. The products that are
discussed in this application note are the ADS7816, ADS7817
and ADS7822 (Figure 1).