National Semiconductor’s WEBENCH tool provides complete power supply architectures

BANGALORE, INDIA: National Semiconductor Corp. expanded its WEBENCH Designer tools with the introduction of WEBENCH Power Architect -- the industry’s first design tool that allows engineers to rapidly create, model and implement multiple-output, high-performance DC-DC power supplies for an entire system.

With WEBENCH Power Architect, system designers can instantly optimize multiple power supplies across several performance parameters including topology, intermediate voltage rails, footprint, efficiency, component count and bill of materials (BOM) cost.

“WEBENCH Power Architect is the first tool to make it easy to quickly design power supplies for all of the loads in a system,” said Phil Gibson, vice president of Technical Sales Tools at National Semiconductor. “Depending on the tool’s optimizer dial setting, a typical system with eight power loads will have a BOM count ranging from 50 to 150 components. This is the only tool that lets you instantly compare performance and cost for many alternative system combinations, and quickly implement them.”

WEBENCH Power Architect supports National’s new SIMPLE SWITCHER power modules. They provide highly integrated and easy-to-use solutions for power supplies requiring low parts-count, small footprint, thermal resistant and low electromagnetic interference (EMI). Using WEBENCH Power Architect’s library of 21,000 components from 110 manufacturers, designers have a wide range of system alternatives for creating large scale complex systems:
* System input sources (VIN) from 1V – 100V
* Up-to-20 system loads (VOUT) from 0.6V – 300V
* Power per load up to 300W
* System efficiency greater than 90 percent
* Per-supply footprints from 14 mm by 14 mm

WEBENCH power architect production support
When engineers finish “dialing-in” their preference for footprint, system BOM cost and power efficiency, National’s WEBENCH Power Architect’s graphical analysis capability instantly identifies major sources of power dissipation, cost and footprint area.

It allows the user to edit individual power supplies and loads to further model and optimize the overall system for thermal and electrical performance design goals.

When the design is complete, the tool generates a system summary report including schematics, BOMs and electrical operating values. Multiple international distributors provide pricing and the WEBENCH “Build It!” feature offers complete BOM prototype kits with overnight shipping.