Silicon Labs Wants to Put Its Analog Chips Into Radios Everywhere

As a small-cap semiconductor company, Silicon Labs (SLAB) must rely on innovation to drive growth and stand out from the crowd. To do so, Silicon Labs relies on its particular strength of putting analog components onto standard CMOS (rather than exotic material) chips. Another example of this was announced today.

Silicon Laboratories Inc., a leader in high-performance, analog-intensive, mixed-signal ICs, today announced the extension of its broadcast audio product portfolio to include the Si473x AM/FM receiver family. The Si473x enables an AM/FM receiver to be easily added to consumer devices such as clock and portable radios, home stereos, MP3 players, docking stations and mobile handsets.The Si473x is the first fully integrated AM/FM radio receiver from antenna input to audio output in a single monolithic IC. Conventional AM/FM radio implementations are large, expensive and difficult to manufacture, limiting the inclusion of AM radio functionality in many small, portable, high-volume applications. The single-chip Si473x requires only two external components in 0.15 cm(2) of board space compared to more than 50 components and 10 cm(2) of board space for conventional solutions.

Samples of the Si4730 and Si4731 are available in a compact 3×3 mm 20-pin quad flat no-lead [QFN] package. Pricing for the Si4730 begins at $4.87 in quantities of 10K. Pricing for the Si4731, which supports RDS/RBDS, begins at $5.53 in quantities of 10K. An evaluation board is available for $150.

At that price range, each million radios sold contributes one percentage point of growth for Silicon Labs.

SLAB 1-yr chart: