Digital Power Controllers Deliver Highly Efficient and Flexible Point-of-Load Power Conversion Solutions

Fairchild Semiconductor addresses energy-efficiency specifications, such as Energy Star, with its first point-of-load digital power control and management products for communication and computing applications. These products combine digital loop control with highly integrated power management capabilities to offer flexible, easy-to-design power delivery solutions and high efficiency over the entire range from light to full load.

Incorporating innovative Digital-DC power conversion architecture, made available through the Fairchild-Zilker manufacturing partnership, these products provide flexible power-stage options and dynamically optimize efficiency as system conditions change. This results in a full-load efficiency improvement up to three percent and a light-load efficiency increase greater than 15 percent in typical applications, reducing peak power dissipation by up to 20 percent. This significantly increases the overall performance of communication, embedded computing and storage applications, and addresses the Energy Star and Climate Savers Computing efficiency guidelines.

The FD2004, FD2004-01 and FD2006 digital power controllers and the FD1505 digital power support driver are universal power building blocks. The controllers operate with a wide input voltage range from as low as 3.0V up to 14V to control output voltages as low as 0.54V and as high as 5.5V. They can also be used alone or connected in parallel to address a wide variety of load currents.

The FD2006 integrates a controller with 3A MOSFET drivers that support loads in excess of 40A with no external driver needed. The controller-only FD2004 can interface with external driver/MOSFET ICs and power train modules to provide power stage design flexibility. Like the FD2004, the FD2004-01 is also a controller-only solution with the added benefit of the industry’s best DC output voltage setpoint accuracy (±0.2 percent). These products deliver accurate power to ever-increasing voltage regulation accuracy requirements of today’s high-performance embedded processors and ASICs. All of these controllers include on-board I2C/SMBus compliant serial ports and support the industry-standard PMBus (Power Management Bus) command set.

The FD1505, a high-speed, high-current synchronous N-Channel synchronous-buck MOSFET driver, is specifically designed for use with the FD2004 and FD2004-01. The FD1505 has dual PWM inputs that take advantage of the dynamic dead-time optimization from the controllers to maximize power conversion efficiency. The device combines +5A/-4A low-side drive with ±3A high-side drive and up to 7.5V gate drive supply input to enable high efficiency at high step-down ratios and high switching frequencies. The FD1505 also provides an adjustable gate drive current feature which allows configurations of 50 percent or 100 percent of its full rated drive current. This feature optimizes performance across a wide range of input/output voltage and output current requirements.

These devices use lead-free (Pb-free) terminals and have been characterized for moisture sensitivity in accordance with the Pb-free reflow requirements of the joint IPC/JEDEC standard J-STD-020. All of Fairchild's products are designed to meet the requirements of the European Union's Directive on the restriction of the use of certain substances (RoHS).

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