Exar Expands Digital Power Product Portfolio

Exar Corp. has added two new products to its Power(XR)™ family of programmable power system ICs. The XRP7713 and XRP7714 are highly integrated programmable power solutions optimized for applications using up to 5A per channel. The XRP7714 offers pin and function compatibility with the Power(XR) XRP7704, XRP7708, and XRP7740. The XRP7713 provides the same performance as the XRP7714 for a 3-channel solution in a 32-pin QFN package.

According to the company, the Power(XR) ICs integrate the best of both worlds; the low cost and flexibility of digital power control as well as the robust power capabilities of high performance analog power switchers. Power(XR) products are said to reduce development time from weeks to hours enabling a significant time-to-market advantage for system design engineers. The company states that by using the Digital Power Studio™ tool, engineers can easily modify voltage, current or other parameters in seconds. Engineers can tweak parameters throughout the design cycle, qualification and into final test. If attached to an Ethernet cable, they can even change the design after it is shipped – just as simple as a firmware update.

"Early market success with the Power(XR) family confirms that our technology and products clearly address customer requirements, and support continued investment in digital power solutions," said Tim Maloney, Senior Director Digital Power Marketing. "We continue to leverage the Power(XR) platform to broaden our product line and provide customers with innovative products for their latest applications. With the introduction of our new XRP7713 and the XRP7714, the Power(XR) family now covers a wider range of applications from low-power consumer to high-power telecom, datacom."

The XRP7713 and XRP7714 offer a wide input voltage range (4.75 to 25V), and output range (0.9 to 5.0V), with a built-in Low-Drop Out regulator (LDO) for standby power, power sequencing capability, and integrated gate drivers. These power system ICs contain multiple Digital Pulse Width Modulator (DPWM) ICs with an effective 12-bit resolution. The ICs contain an integrated LDO regulator that provides a fifth voltage supply, which can also be employed as a standby-voltage source and is fully configurable via an I²C interface for monitoring, control and management of dc-dc power conversion. The devices contain integrated gate drivers for the high-current outputs and up to six General Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) pins. Exar’s Digital Power Studio enables designers to intelligently configure the power supply’s voltage setting and current thresholds, fault monitoring and response, soft start and active shutdown timing, and channel sequencing, phase shift management, and loop response, amongst other features. The ICs use a digital PID (proportional, integral, differential) control algorithm that performs full-digital loop control at switching frequencies to 1.5 MHz.

Samples of the XRP7713, XRP7714 are available now. Offered in a RoHS compliant, "green"/halogen free 32-pin and 40-pin QFN package respectively operating within the -40 to +85°C temperature range. The XRP7713 is priced at $2.90 in 1K piece quantities and the XRP7714 is priced at $3.40 in 1K piece quantities.