At a recent press briefing, I
received a press kit that had
something unusual in it—a circuit
board. The board was a fully
assembled and tested platform
to evaluate the new
LM25576 SIMPLE
SWITCHER step-down converter from National Semiconductor.
If you believe the company, and there’s no
reason not to, this board was a cinch to design.
To design this type of board, you simply go to the
company’s web sight at www.national.com, click on
WEBENCH Tools, sign in and you’re on your way. The
latest twist on this tool, which has been around for a
few years, is the ability to “dial-in” the size and efficiency
requirements of the converter. There’s actually a virtual
dial that you turn with your mouse. As you turn the
dial, you can see how increasing or decreasing the
switching frequency affects size or other parameters of
the circuit. This looks like a real time saver to me.
The new members of the family, and there are six of
them, have a feature that makes this dialing tool possible—
an adjustable switching frequency range. Three of
the family members have a range from 50 kHz to
1 MHz, and three others from 50 kHz to 500 kHz. Previous
members of the family were fixed-frequency devices.
Mal Humphrey from National made it seem as though
anyone, even novice engineers, could design with this
tool and, as I recall, he even gave me access to it. I
haven’t tried it out yet, but will probably do so in the near
future and write about the experience in my blog on
www.eepn.com. But I’m also interested in finding out if
some of you have used WEBENCH and what you think
of it. You can e-mail me or respond to the blog once it’s
written. Another great feature of WEBENCH is the final
product you can order and receive in 24-48 hours—a
board just like the one in my press kit.
If you’re interested in finding out more about the
new SIMPLE SWITCHER family, just turn to page 10.
Otherwise, I’ll finish reporting on this in my blog.
E-mail your comments to me at [email protected]