Catalyst Semi Offers New High-Resolution Brightness, LED Drivers For LCD Backlight Control
Catalyst Semiconductor, Inc. announced an expansion of its line of patented, Quad-Mode™ fractional charge pump LED drivers with two new high-resolution brightness devices, featuring 32-dimming levels to provide enhanced LCD backlight control in portable product applications.
The new CAT3647 and CAT3648 are said to address the need for high-resolution LCD control and longer battery life in cell phones, digital cameras and other handheld devices, where designers constantly need to balance higher performance features with longer battery life.
The CAT3647 and CAT3648 are said to give designers finer control of LED current and brightness with the ability to program in step increments as small as three percent, to produce a richer user experience. This is achieved via Catalyst’s 1-wire EZDim™ programming interface, which supports 32 linear steps from full-scale brightness down to zero current.
The new LED drivers are four-mode fractional charge pumps (1x, 1.33x, 1.5x, 2x), providing 10% higher efficiency and no added cost, compared to three-mode charge pumps. The CAT3647 drives three LEDs at 30mA each and the CAT3648 drives four LEDs at 25mA each, both with power efficiency as high as 92%. The company claims that both devices save significant board space and costs since they come in a low profile, 3 x 3mm, 16-pad TQFN package and do not require additional capacitors, as do existing four-mode LED drivers.
"The portable LED market is very large, with diverse approaches to driving the LEDs," stated Scott Brown, Vice President of Marketing for Catalyst Semiconductor. "Based on our strategy to be a ’one-stop’ supplier of drivers to meet these varying requirements, we responded to market demand with these two higher-resolution versions of our existing three- and four-channel Quad-Mode LED drivers."
Pricing for the CAT3647 LED driver is $0.64 each, in 10.000 piece quantities. The CAT3648 is priced at $0.68 each in 10,000 piece quantities. Projected lead-time for production quantities is currently 6 to 8 weeks ARO.
