The CA3318 operates over a wide full scale input voltage range of 4V up to 7.5V with maximum power consumption depending upon the clock frequency selected. When operated from a 5V supply at a clock frequency of 15MHz, the typical power consumption of the CA3318 is 150mW. The intrinsic high conversion rate makes the CA3318 ideally suited for digitizing high speed signals. The overflow bit makes possible the connection of two or more CA3318s in series to increase the resolution of the conversion system. A series connection of two CA3318s may be used to produce a 9-bit high speed converter. Operation of two CA3318s in parallel doubles the conversion speed (i.e., increases the sampling rate from 15MHz to 30MHz). 256 paralleled auto balanced voltage comparators measure the input voltage with respect to a known reference to produce the parallel bit outputs in the CA3318. 255 comparators are required to quantize all input voltage levels in this 8-bit converter, and the additional comparator is required for the overflow bit.