As logic systems get larger and more complex, theirsupply current requirements continue to rise. Systemsrequiring 100A are fairly common. A high current powersupply to meet such requirements usually requires parallelingseveral power regulators to alleviate the thermalstress on the individual power components. A powersupply designer is left with the choice of how to drive theseparalleled regulators: brute-force single-phase or smartPolyPhaseTM.
Removing output capacitors saves money and boardspace. Linear Technology’s OPTI-LOOPTM architectureallows you to use the output capacitors of your choice andcompensate the control loop for optimum transientresponse and loop stability. Figure 1 shows the dramaticimprovement possible with the OPTI-LOOP architecture.With the improvement shown in Figure 1, less capacitance
In an increasing trend, telecommunications, networking,audio and instrumentation require low noise power supplies.In particular, there is interest in low noise, lowdropout linear regulators (LDO). These components powernoise-sensitive circuitry, circuitry that contains noisesensitiveelements or both. Additionally, to conserve power,particularly in battery driven apparatus such as cellulartelephones, the regulators must operate with low input-tooutputvoltages.1 Devices presently becoming availablemeet these requirements (see separate section, “A Familyof 20mVRMS Noise, Low Dropout Regulators”).
The above title is not happenstance and was arrived at afterconsiderable deliberation. As a linear IC manufacturer, it isour goal to encourage users to design and build switchingregulators. A problem is that while everyone agrees thatworking switching regulators are a good thing, everyonealso agrees that they are difficult to get working. Switchingregulators, with their high efficiency and small size, areincreasingly desirable as overall package sizes shrink.Unfortunately, switching regulators are also one of themost difficult linear circuits to design. Mysterious modes,sudden, seemingly inexplicable failures, peculiar regulationcharacteristics and just plain explosions are commonoccurrences. Diodes conduct the wrong way. Things gethot that shouldn’t. Capacitors act like resistors, fusesdon’t blow and transistors do. The output is at ground, andthe ground terminal shows volts of noise.
Providing power for the Pentium® microprocessor family isnot a trivial task by any means. In an effort to simplify thistask we have developed a new switching regulator controlcircuit and a new linear regulator to address the needs ofthese processors. Considerable time has been spent developingan optimized decoupling network. Here are severalcircuits using the new LTC®1266 synchronous buck regulatorcontrol chip and the LT®1584 linear regulator toprovide power for Pentium processors and Pentium VREprocessors. The Pentium processor has a supply requirementof 3.3V ±5%. The Pentium VRE processor requires3.500V ±100mV.
Linear Technology has a sabbatical program. Every fiveyears employees are granted sabbatical leave, which maylast up to six weeks. You have 18 months from each fiveyear employment anniversary to take the leave. Sabbaticalis fully company paid and has no restrictions. The time isyours to do with as you please.
Sensing and/or controlling current flow is a fundamental requirement in many electronics systems, and the tech-niques to do so are as diverse as the applications them-selves. This Application Note compiles solutions to cur-rent sensing problems and organizes the solutions by general application type. These circuits have been culled from a variety of Linear Technology documents
