High speed counter with step control

counterdds

I am trying to build my own DDS. I want to make a lookup table (eeprom)that controls steps of a counter and then feed it into a DAC to make a wave form ( something like that Direct Digital Synthesizers do).

It seems all parts are straight forward except the counter. Normally, counters start counting from 0-2^n-1. For example a 256 step counter starts from 0 and counts one by one to 255. Now I need a counter that can count with controlled steps (jump). For example 0,10,20,…,250 or 0-4,8,.. And these steps are selected programmatically with count speed around 100MHz.

Anyone knows an IC that does the job? I heard Analog Devices has parts like that but I don't know under which product group should I look for that?

Best Answer

You could build your own counter with adjustable steps in a CPLD or FPGA.

Better yet, just implement the entire DDS in a small FPGA, memory and all. There's next to no logic design work in it, e.g. Xilinx provide free DDS IP.

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