New Industry Products

TI Debuts the TPS5461x SWIFT Synchronous-Buck DC/DC Converters

August 12, 2001 by Jeff Shepard

Texas Instruments (TI, Dallas, TX) has announced a new series of high-performance, synchronous-buck dc/dc converters that enable designers to develop power supplies with as few as six external components. The new synchronous dc/dc converters, with internal 12A MOSFET switches, are capable of supplying greater than 6A of continuous output current over the entire operating temperature range, and operate over a 3V to 6V input-voltage range. Fixed or adjustable output-voltage versions are available down to 0.9V with 1.0 percent initial accuracy. The devices are capable of up to 95 percent efficiency and are suitable for use in powering point-of-load DSP, FPGA and microcontroller applications, as well as notebook PCs, networking and optical communications systems; and low-voltage, high-density, distributed-power systems.

The TPS5461x SWIFT (switcher with integrated FET technology) converters have an interactive software-development tool that speeds novice and veteran power supply designers through the entire external component selection process. The development tool provides a bill of materials, reference schematics, loop-response graphs and an efficiency curve based on the designer’s inputs. External inductors and capacitors are chosen from the tool’s database of components (users can also add their favorite components to the database).

The TPS5461x devices provide integrated protection features such as power-good, over-current protection, thermal shutdown and under-voltage lockout. TI reports that an integrated synchronous rectifier and a 30mW Rds(on) of the power MOSFETs enable the device to achieve efficiencies greater than 95 percent. The switching frequency can be one of two preset values or adjusted anywhere between the range of 280kHz to 700kHz. Additionally, the devices utilize TI's PowerPAD package. The company claims that this enables up to three times the thermal performance of other packaging without the need for heatsinks. An externally compensated option is also available.

"Strong time-to-market pressures make power-supply development a critical path for manufacturers of a variety of advanced end equipments," said Rich Nowakowski, product marketing manager of TI power-management products. "When a complex dc/dc controller design using external MOSFETs is too time-consuming or risky, and a dc/dc module is too expensive, TI’s high-performance TPS5461x SWIFT dc/dc converter will make designing power supplies from a 3.3V to 5V bus easier and faster."

The TPS5461x dc/dc converters are currently available from TI. The devices are packaged in 28-pin PowerPAD TSSOPs. Suggested resale pricing is $4.99 each in quantities of 1,000. A 3A, 20-pin TSSOP version is planned for volume production in October 2001 with samples available now.