The LTC1090 is a data acquisition component which contains a serial I/O successive approximation A/D converter. It uses LTCMOSTM switched capacitor technology to perform either 10-bit unipolar, or 9-bit plus sign bipolar A/D conversions. The 8-channel input multiplexer can be configured for either single ended or differential inputs (or combinations thereof). An on-chip sample and hold is included for all single ended input channels. The serial I/O is designed to be compatible with industry standard full duplex serial interfaces. It allows either MSB or LSB first data and automatically provides 2's complement output coding in the bipolar mode. The output data word can be programmed for a length of 8, 10, 12 or 16 bits. This allows easy interface to shift registers and a variety of processors.