National Semiconductor intros industry’s highest-efficiency, high-current buck regulators

SANTA CLARA, USA: National Semiconductor Corp. has introduced a pair of high-current, synchronous buck regulators with the industry’s highest efficiency at 97 percent. The LM21212-1 and LM21215 are well-suited for high-performance FPGAs, ASICs and microprocessors used in a variety of low-voltage applications including wireless, networking and optical communications infrastructure.

National will showcase the LM21212-1 and LM21215 at the Applied Power Electronics Conference and Expo (APEC) in Fort Worth, Texas, March 6-10. APEC is one of the industry’s leading conferences for practicing power electronics professionals.

Members of National’s PowerWise energy-efficient product family, the LM21212-1 and LM21215 high-current buck regulators feature integrated high-side and low-side FETs, which simplify design and reduce solution size.

The LM21212-1 features an output current up to 12 amps with synchronizable switching frequency and the LM21215 provides a resistor-programmable current limit, allowing up to 15 amps of continuous output current, offering the industry’s best power density. Both products provide peak efficiency greater than 97 percent from a 5V input to 3.3V output, and greater than 92 percent efficiency when regulating a 1.2V output from a 5V input.

Under typical operating conditions such as 5 Vin, 1.2 Vout, 10A, 500 kHz and 25 degrees C ambient, the regulators provide a three percent to five percent efficiency improvement and up to 10 degrees C cooler case temperature than similar products on the market today.