The core voltages for FPGAs are moving lower as a resultof advances in the fabrication process. The newest FPGAfamily from Altera, the Stratix® II, now requires a corevoltage of 1.2V and the Stratix, Stratix GX, HardCopy®Stratix and CycloneTM families require a core voltage of1.5V. This article discusses how to power the core and I/Oof low voltage FPGAs using the latest step-down switchmode controllers from Linear Technology Corporation.
Multiple-voltage electronics systems often requirecomplex supply voltage tracking or sequencing, whichif not met, can result in system faults or even permanentfailures in the fi eld. The design diffi culties in meetingthese requirements are often compounded in distributedpowerarchitectures where point-of-load (POL) DC/DCconverters or linear regulators are scattered across PCboard space, sometimes on different board planes. Theproblem is that power supply circuitry is often the lastcircuitry to be designed into the board, and it must beshoehorned into whatever little board real estate is left.Often, a simple, drop-in, fl exible solution is needed tomeet these requirements.
As the performance of many handheld devices approachesthat of laptop computers, design complexity also increases.Chief among them is thermal management—how doyou meet increasing performance demands while keepinga compact and small product cool in the user’s hand?For instance, as battery capacities inevitably increase,charge currents will also increase to maintain or improvetheir charge times. Traditional linear regulator-based batterychargers will not be able to meet the charge currentand effi ciency demands necessary to allow a product torun cool. What is needed is a switching-based chargerthat takes just about the same amount of space as a linearsolution—but without the heat.
Handheld designers often grapple with ways to de-bounceand control the on/off pushbutton of portable devices.Traditional de-bounce designs use discrete logic, fl ipflops, resistors and capacitors. Other designs includean onboard microprocessor and discrete comparatorswhich continuously consume battery power. For highvoltage multicell battery applications, a high voltageLDO is needed to drive the low voltage devices. All thisextra circuitry not only increases required board spaceand design complexity, but also drains the battery whenthe handheld device is turned off. Linear Technology addressesthis pushbutton interface challenge with a pairof tiny pushbutton controllers.
Linear Technology’s DC/DC step-down μModule®regulators are complete switchmode power supplies in asurface-mount package. They include the DC/DC controller,inductor, power switches and supporting circuitry.These highly integrated regulators also provide an easysolution for applications that require negative outputvoltages. In other words, these products can operate asinverting buck-boost regulators. As a result, the lowestpotential in the circuit is not the standard 0V, but –VOUT,which must be tied to the μModule regulator’s GND. Allsignals are now referred to –VOUT.
Today’s computer, datacom, and telecom systems demandpower supplies that are effi cient, respond quicklyto load transients and accurately regulate the voltageat the load. For example, load current can be measuredby using the inductor DCR, thus eliminating the needfor a dedicated sense resistor. Inductor DCR sensingincreases effi ciency—especially at heavy load—whilereducing component cost and required board space.The LTC®3856 single-output 2-phase synchronous buckcontroller improves the accuracy of inductor DCR sensingby compensating for changes in DCR due to temperature.
One of the fi rst lessons in a basic electronics coursecovers the symbols for resistors, capacitors, inductors,voltage sources and current sources. Althougheach symbol represents a functional component of areal-world circuit, only some of the symbols have directphysical counterparts. For instance, the three discretepassive devices—resistors, capacitors, inductors—canbe picked off a shelf and placed on a real board muchas their symbolic analogs appear in a basic schematic.Likewise, while voltage sources have no direct 2-terminalanalog, a voltage source can be easily built with an offthe-shelf linear regulator.
A frequent requirement in systems involves drivinganalog signals into non-linear or reactive loads. Cables,transformers, actuators, motors and sample-hold circuitsare examples where the ability to drive diffi cult loads isrequired. Although several power buffer amplifi ers areavailable, none have been optimized for driving diffi cultloads.
The voltage range of Linear Technology’s PowerPath® circuitscan be easily extended with just a few components, thusallowing them to meet the needs of virtually all applications.This application note presents solutions for circuits thatmust withstand large negative voltages, a reverse adapterinput for example, and circuits that must withstand largepositive inputs, such as automotive load-dump.
Telecommunication, satellite links and set-top boxes allrequire tuning a high frequency oscillator. The actualtuning element is a varactor diode, a 2-terminal device thatchanges capacitance as a function of reverse bias voltage.1 The oscillator is part of a frequency synthesizingloop, as detailed in Figure 1. A phase locked loop (PLL)compares a divided down representation of the oscillatorwith a frequency reference. The PLL’s output is levelshifted to provide the high voltage necessary to bias thevaractor, which closes a feedback loop by voltage tuningthe oscillator. This loop forces the voltage controlledoscillator (VCO) to operate at a frequency determined bythe frequency reference and the divider’s division ratio.
