Power Controllers Allow Boards To Be Swapped When Hot

An extensive feature set that includes circuit-breaker over-current protection, rise/fall time control, output power status indicators, and under-voltage lock-out are expected to help the TPS23xx family of power controllers find wide use in device bay and hot-plug PCI circuit boards in servers and workstations, RAID storage systems, and other electronic circuit-breaker applications.
Presently, the family includes six dual-channel and two single-channel members, with the ICs integrating internal charge pumps for driving multiple external high-side N-channel MOSFETs used for supplying milliamps to amps of power to system circuitry. Standby supply current is a mere 5.0 µA. The hot-swap power controller family provides design flexibility by supporting independent operation of two channels-- one at 3V to 12V and the other at 3V to 5V-- and by offering devices that have either active-low or active-high enable signals. The contollers come in TSSOPs with up to 20 pins, depending on functionality, and cost from $2 to $3.50 each/1000.