Texas Instruments

I had the pleasure to meet with Sami Kiriaki, Senior Vice President and Worldwide Manager of TI's Power Management business unit within the company's Analog division. He provides strategic leadership to help TI meet the demanding power management challenges facing end-equipment designers worldwide and manages TI's large portfolio of power management solutions for portable and line-powered designs.

Sami took me through the company's strengths and strategy and the latest power products coming from this premier power house. Indeed, the product portfolio includes everything a designer would need for power management, signal chain and control functions. It was also good to hear that TI is investing in the future with R&D. TI's power management broad portfolio is augmented with a strong support network enabling the company to offer complete portable and line power solutions. TI has over 8,000 products and is launching over 200 new products per year. Strong technical support means over 30 local TI Power design centers worldwide with design services providing its customers already with more than 5000 easy-to-use power designs. With over 2x Field Applications Engineers vs. any competitor, software tools like the renowned SwitcherPro™ and the support of a real E2E online community, the company is providing the most secure design environment for its engineering community.

Sami then launched into the company's newest products: Breakthrough high-density power solutions for PoL designs There are two new power management integrated circuits for point-of-load designs that raise the bar for size, power density and performance. TI's TPS82671 and TPS84620 integrated power solutions ease design and speed time-to-market in portable electronics, communications and industrial applications. Insert: TPS84620_graphic

"Point-of-load designs require greater power density, high efficiency and ease of use," said Sami Kiriaki, senior vice president of TI's Power Management business. "These two new power devices achieve new levels of integration and performance, and allow us to support a wide range of customers in portable, telecom, base station and industrial markets like never before." Smallest integrated 600mA solution The TPS82671 is the industry's smallest integrated plug-in power solution at 6.7mm2, providing 90 milliamps per square millimeter. The device combines all external components in TI's new MicroSiP™ package with a 1mm height -- easing design for 600mA portable electronics, such as smartphones.

The TPS82671 operates at a very low 17uA quiescent current and achieves power efficiency of greater than 90 percent from an input voltage of 2.3V to 4.8V. A unique PWM frequency dithering feature reduces noise and improves performance in radio frequency-sensitive designs. Visit: www.ti.com/tps82671-preu. Ultra-dense point-of-load TI's new 6A, 14.5V TPS84620 achieves a power density of greater than 800 watts per cubic inch with up to 95 percent efficiency and 30 percent better thermal dissipation than competitors. The integrated step-down solution combines the inductor and passives onto one device, and requires only three external components, resulting in a complete solution in a space less than 200mm2. The TPS84620 supports a variety of high-power telecom infrastructure and industrial systems that use DSPs and FPGAs. Visit: www.ti.com/tps84620-preu.

Broadest range of point-of-load solutions TI offers the broadest range of power management ICs for non-isolated point-of-load designs, including step-up and step-down converters for portable and line-powered systems. These range from ultra-low power DC/DC converters with and without integrated FETs to fully integrated power solutions to plug-in power modules.

Availability and pricing The TPS82671 and TPS84620 are available in volume now from TI and its authorized distributors. The TPS82671 comes in an 8-pin, 2.3mm x 2.9mm x 1mm MicroSiP™ BGA package with a suggested resale price of $1.30 in 1,000-unit quantities. The TPS84620 comes in a 15mm x 9mm x 2.8mm QFN package with a suggested resale price of $7.00 in 1,000-unit quantities. Evaluation modules for both devices are available through TI's eStore. www.ti.com