Texas Instruments said that its latest linear regulator eliminates the need for a number of discrete components, resulting in around 75 percent higher efficiency and 100 percent more power density compared to competing products. The company said that the new linear regulator introduced on Monday delivers higher efficiency and lower noise while enabling the use of smaller power supplies.
The company's latest chip, which was announced at the Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC), is based on a new switched-capacitor architecture. The chip is designed to replace many of the components—including the bridge rectifier, inductors, transformers, circuit breakers and interrupers—that typically surround a linear regulator, which is used in electronic devices to maintain a constant output voltage.
Combining all these components into a single chip shrinks down the linear regulator by around 25 percent, resulting in higher overall power density. Texas Instruments also designed a dynamic active bridge to pre-regulate the input voltage to the linear regulator, reducing the part's standby power to 10 mW, or around 75 percent lower compared to other capacitor-drop designs. The linear regulator delivers up to half a watt from AC to DC.
Texas Instruments, the largest supplier of analog semiconductors by sales, offers customers more than 500 linear regulators. The company's latest product, the TPS7A78, costs a dollar in 1,000-unit volumes. The chip measures 5-millimeters by 6.5-millimeters and is delivered in a thin-shrink, small-outline, or TSSOP, package.