Single-chip synchronous step-down DC/DC converter reduces area by 60%

Currently, many telecommunications and server architecture standards (PCI, ATCA) have fixed sizes and power budgets for rack equipment. The increasing PCB density supports designers to achieve more differentiated designs, and high-efficiency power supplies support higher card density and performance. Liu Xuechao, an advanced technology market development engineer at Texas Instruments (TI), said that at present, the 12V voltage bus is still the mainstream, and higher current distribution requires smaller connectors , and it is more efficient than the 3.3V MOSFET gate drive voltage. How to increase POL density without reducing efficiency and performance is a problem that needs attention.

Compared with the previous generation SWIFT devices, the TPS54620 power conversion efficiency is up to 95%.

TI recently launched the industry's smallest single- chip 6A, 17V synchronous step-down DC/DC converter TPS54620, which belongs to TI's easy-to-use SWIFT power management product series. Compared with the current multi-chip converters, the TPS54620 has a 60% reduction in area. As a complete 6 A power solution, its area is less than 195mm2, which is only one-quarter of a postage stamp. The 1.6 MHz monolithic DC/DC converter supports 4.5 V ~ 17 V input voltage and can manage 5 V and 12 V load point design processes with limited space such as wireless base stations or high-density servers.

Liu Xuechao introduced that TPS54620 has high reliability, such as high-precision voltage reference with an accuracy error of ±1% under different temperatures. Compared with the previous generation SWIFT device, the converter has a power conversion efficiency of up to 95%, Rds(on) is reduced by 25%, and can power deep submicron TI digital signal processors (DSPs) and other embedded processors such as FPGAs and ASICs.

As a SWIFT series device, the TPS54620 supports 6 A continuous and 8 A peak load currents and a power stage input voltage of 1.6 V ~ 17 V; the synchronous converter integrates two high-efficiency MOSFETs (26 mΩ and 19 mΩ) and adopts a small thermally enhanced 3.5 mm x 3.5 mm monolithic QFN package that can minimize the footprint ; the device's master clock synchronized switching frequency can eliminate beat frequency noise in sensitive data acquisition circuits , and the TPS54620 integrates enable and tracking pins to meet sequencing needs.

"The two MOSFETs integrated in the TPS54620 come from CICLON Semiconductor Device Corporation, which TI acquired in February this year . CICLON's advanced power management technology can double the operating frequency of the power system to achieve an efficiency of more than 90%, while the package size is 20% smaller than the current power supply," said Liu Xuechao. "CICLON's NexFET MOSFET technology can improve the above performance and optimize the size by significantly reducing the gate charge."