The company for years promoted its own VCX logic as a lower power alternative for high speed applications, but said customer demand for ALVC-compatible products has been overwhelming.

"We think VCX may be a little ahead of its time, in that its operating voltage range is below that of ALVC," said Jeff Corbin, low voltage product marketing manager at Fairchild, noting that VCX has penetrated just 1% of the low-voltage market in four years.

"As we go forward, we will see more market adoption of VCX, but today's market is [asking] for ALVC."

ALVC is a high speed flavor of low-voltage logic commonly used as an interface to system memory in servers and workstations. Specifications call for 3-nanosecond propagation delays at 3V, 24 milliamps of current drive, and operation from 1.8V to 3.6V.

In 2000, the ALVC market represented about $92 million in revenue, with five key players dividing the pie, according to researcher Insight Onsite, San Jose. However, even in a commodity arena that requires second-source options, customers are increasingly looking to minimize suppliers.

According to Fairchild executives, the logic market will favor large suppliers that can put a lot of money into R&D and manufacturing cost reduction. By entering the market with a full family of competitively priced products, the second largest supplier of single-gate logic chips hopes to accelerate what it sees as inevitable consolidation.

"It looks to us as though there are three suppliers committed to this market, and we're one of the three," said Bill Hall, vice president of Fairchild's Interface and Logic Group. "I think we'll start to see the smaller guys shake out because they can't afford to play."

Though Fairchild declined to specify how much of its revenue is earmarked for logic R&D, the company said it has been focused for the past three years on cost reducing its 0.35-micron CMOS process technology at its fab in South Portland, Maine, and its back end packaging, test and assembly operation in Penang, Malaysia.

Fairchild's 45-device ALVC family was aligned to TI's specifications, but developed from the ground up using Fairchild's own processes to avoid royalty costs, the company said.

In an effort to offer an advantage over socket-compatible parts, the company enhanced its ALVC offering with bushold and non-bushold devices to allow customers to optimize power consumption. Bushold allows a bus to sit at a given voltage level when it's not in use, which consumes a lot of power. Using a device without bushold saves about 500 microamps per I/O on a 16-bit device, or up to 8 milliamps of current, Fairchild said.

Initially, 20 products are available. Of the more common devices, the 74ALVCH16244 is 72 cents; the 74ALVCH245 is 36 cents; and the 74ALVC00 is 18 cents. Pricing is based on quantities of 10,000.