Industry’s highest efficiency high current buck regulators?
1 min read
National Semiconductor has introduced two high current, synchronous buck regulators with the 'industry's highest' efficiency of 97%. The LM21212-1 and LM21215 are designed for use in high performance fpgas, asics and microprocessors in low voltage applications such as wireless, networking and optical communications infrastructure.
The devices are part of the company's PowerWise energy efficient product range and feature integrated high side and low side FETs to simplify design and reduce solution size. The LM21212-1 features an output current up to 12A with synchronisable switching frequency and the LM21215 is optimised to provide a resistor programmable current limit.
According to the company, this allows up to 15A of continuous output current, which is the industry's best power density. Both products are designed to provide peak efficiency of more than 97% from a 5V input to 3.3V output, and more than 92% efficiency when regulating a 1.2V output from a 5V input.
Under typical operating conditions such as 5Vin, 1.2Vout, 10A, 500 kHz and 25°C ambient, the regulators are designed to provide a 3 to 5% efficiency improvement and up to 10° cooler case temperature than similar products on the market.
