Patent ID: 7692569

Claim:
An apparatus comprising: a plurality of inputs whose values together define a thermometer code to be converted to an analog output signal on each of a plurality of successive time increments; a plurality of conversion elements, each configured to convert one of the values at the plurality of inputs into an output signal; a shift circuit having a plurality of outputs connected to the plurality of conversion elements, the shift circuit coupled between the plurality of inputs and the plurality of conversion elements, the shift circuit selectively providing the values at the plurality of inputs to the plurality of conversion elements on the plurality of outputs to apply a rotation on each of the plurality of successive time increments, the rotation being indicated by a rotation pointer; and an asynchronous pointer circuit coupled to the shift circuit and adapted to generate the rotation pointer on each of the successive time increments based on the values at the plurality of outputs during a preceding time increment, the pointer circuit indicating to the shift circuit which of the values at the plurality of inputs are to be provided to which of the plurality of conversion elements on a current time increment, wherein the pointer circuit includes an asynchronous gate assembly with N binary inputs R 1 to R N and with N binary outputs P 1 to P N , wherein each respective output P i is defined by a binary function including R (i-1) and the inverse of R (i) combined by an AND-gate function.