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).