Texas Instruments’ (TI) power management integrated circuit (IC) turns power supplies in data centers and telecommunications equipment into fully scalable, stackable power systems. The TPS40140 synchronous, pulse-width modulation (PWM) controller operates as a stand-alone device that generates two outputs, or as a two-channel, multi-phase controller.
Using the device's advanced capabilities, designers are now able to "stack" multiple devices together to create a high-density power supply that can generate up to 320 A of output current and support up to 16 phases. In addition, the system can maintain greater power efficiency with today's power stage components.
The unique stacking capability of the TPS40140 enables the power supply to perform automatic phase-balancing, which significantly minimizes the ripple current in both the output and input capacitors and allows an overall smaller solution size. Designers can also implement topologies where multiple output rails based on multi-phase and/or single-phase output topologies are both synchronized and phase-balanced to achieve greater levels of power density and flexibility while maintaining a uniform electromagnetic interference (EMI) spectrum of frequencies.
The TPS40140 current-mode controller supports a wide input voltage conversion range of 2 V to 40 V, enabling high-performance operation from a 4.5 V to 15 V power source. The device has excellent line and load regulation of 0.1%, supported by a high-precision +/-0.5%, 0.7-V voltage reference and high-accuracy differential load sense amplifier.
Packaged in a 6 mm x 6 mm, 36-pin QFN, pricing is $3.30 each in quantities of 1000 units. Software development tools for the TPS40140 will be available in the fourth quarter of 2006.