Stackable DC/DC buck converter enhances thermal performance, says TI
The latest 40A Swift DC/DC buck converter from Texas Instruments offers stackability up to four ICs. The TPS546D24A PMBus buck converter can deliver up to 160A of output current at an 85 degrees C ambient temperature, which is four times more current than any other competing device, says TI. The TPS546D24A is also claimed to have the highest efficiency of any 40A DC/DC converter, allowing engineers to reduce power loss by 1.5W in high-performance data centre and enterprise computing, medical, wireless infrastructure, and wired networking applications.
The stackable TPS546D24A buck converter comes with a PMBus interface that offers a selectable internal compensation network that allows engineers to eliminate up to six external compensation components from the board for a power supply size reduction of over 10 per cent or 130mm2 for higher-current FPGA/application-specific ICs (ASICs) when compared with discrete multiphase controllers.
The 1.5MHz switching frequency provides for 40A per IC while reducing inductance and capacitance by one-third compared with similar converters, says TI. There is also a 0.9mOhm low side MOSFET which, despite the high switching frequencies, achieves 3.5 per cent higher efficiency than competing DC/DC buck converters, according to TI.
To meet the rigorous voltage accuracy requirements for power supplies required to support FPGA DC rails, the TPS546D24A offers an output voltage error of less than one per cent. The PMBus command set and pin-strapping configurability allow users to monitor current for fault reporting and to avoid overdesign.
The TPS546D24A is available now from TI and authorised distributors in a 5.0 x 7.0mm, 40-pin QFN package. Pin-to-pin- and footprint- compatible, pre-production TPS546B24A (20A) and TPS546A24A (10A) DC/DC converters are also available now and there is a TPS546D24AEVM evaluation module.