Isolated IO method? Capactive, opto or magnetic?

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noisepic

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I don't know how to choose capacitive, opto or magnetic to isolate fpga I/O pin. All of them are good! But which is the best?
 

Hi,

Which color is the best?
Which music is the best?
Which isolator is the best?

Generally asking for "the best" is useless unless you give informations in which regard.
In my applications I always have chosen the best isolator: In one application it was "optical" in another it was "magnetic", in another it was "capacitive".
Even worse: I used more then 10 "best" but different types of optocouplers.....

Each isolator comes with a datasheet.
Each datasheet has a lot of specifications.
Go through them item by item and decide if this is important for you and where you set the limit.

And there are other things - maybe important for you:
* price
* availability
* already in stock
* good reputation
* ...


Klaus
 
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    d123

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For FPGA lines the best general purpose digital isolators are probably the SOIC/SOIC16 types that are offered in footprint compatible versions from Analog/SILbas/Maxim and TI (I've been using primarily SI labs for a while).

They use different types of technology (magnetic, capacitive etc) but offer functionality that's largely the same with a few caveats (some do have DC level start-up problems, SILabs capacitive types do not).

These types range from 1-6 IO's in either direction, up to about 150Mbps and from 1-5kV isolation. They also offer specialized variants such as I2C isolators, gate drivers etc (both of which have footprint compatible versions from multiple vendors).

I'd start with SILabs here:
https://www.silabs.com/products/isolation/digital-isolators
 

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