IR's New High-Power PowIRstage®

IR's new PowIRstage® solution beats today's industry-best with up to a staggering 3% higher electrical efficiency. I had the opportunity to talk with a very busy Deepak Savadatti, IR's Executive Director, Multiphase Products, to find out what all the excitement around the IR booth was all about. One thing is clear; International Rectifier is a world leader in power management technology. Its analog and mixed signal ICs, advanced circuit devices, integrated power systems and components help enable high performance computing and reduce energy waste from motors, the world's single largest consumer of electricity. Leading manufacturers of computers, energy efficient appliances, lighting, automobiles, satellites, aircraft and defense systems rely on IR's power management benchmarks to power their next generation products. So what's special about this one? The company introduced its new IR3550, the first in a family of integrated PowIRstage® products that delivers higher efficiency and better thermal performance than competing solutions along with smallest footprint while simplifying the DC-DC converter design for next-generation high performance servers, storage and communication systems.

The 60A rated IR3550 simplifies the design and implementation of high current high performance multiphase buck regulators. The resulting system solution helps enable fewer phases and lower cost compared to alternative solutions. The new PowIRstage® solution integrates a high-performance synchronous buck gate driver, IR's latest generation control and synchronous MOSFETs featuring extremely low on-state resistance (RDS(on)) and gate charge, and a Schottky diode into a high density, low profile 6mm x 6mm x 0.9mm PQFN package. The IR3550 offers superior performance compared to alternative power stage solutions, by achieving up to a 3 percent improvement in electrical efficiency to help reduce overall power losses and heat generation in the system, thereby reducing dependency on complex thermal management techniques and associated costs as well as improving reliability.

Deepak explained to me, "Many alternative solutions require substantial de-rating in order to be used in real-life applications to maintain safe operating conditions, and, therefore, require more phases to satisfy the requirements of the load. IR's new IR3550 PowIRstage® solution has removed the traditional bottleneck within the buck regulator, enabling higher current handling capability, and lower phase count than current solutions." IR's IR3550 is compatible with most analog and digital controllers available on the market today, providing the designer the flexibility to select the PWM controller of preference. The PowIRstage® solution features an integrated current sense amplifier that achieves superior accuracy and signal-to-noise ratios compared to alternate controller-based inductor DCR sensing techniques.

Additionally, the device achieves industry best peak and Thermal Design Current (TDC) electrical efficiencies, with up to 95 percent peak efficiency. The high switching frequency capability of the IR3550 allows for the miniaturization of output inductors and input and output capacitors to help reduce overall solution size. A datasheet for the device is available on the International Rectifier website at http://www.irf.com. A demo board and accompanying application note are available on request. Contact Brian Moran at bmoran2@irf.com or your local sales representative for additional information. Pricing Pricing for the IR3550 begins at US $2.65 each respectively in 10,000-unit quantities. For more information, go to www.irf.com Join our lively new community section at PSD, view the content and contribute to our APEC experience, or start one of your own, by logging into the ‘community' tab on the homepage of our website: www.powersystemsdesign.com/signup