Power IC supplying a maximum output current of 160A at 85℃
Enhancing thermal performance for telecommunications, enterprise, and industrial applications

TI has released a new 40A SWIFT DC/DC buck converter that can stack up to four ICs for the first time in a buck converter.

The TPS546D24A PMBus buck converter is a power IC that supplies a maximum output current of 160A, which is four times higher than competing products at an ambient temperature of 85°C. The TPS546D24A has the highest efficiency among all 40A DC/DC converters and can reduce power loss by 1.5W in high-performance data centers, enterprise computing, medical, wireless infrastructure, and wired networking applications.


Reduce power supply size and optimize thermal performance
The size and thermal performance of the solution are major considerations for engineers designing power supplies for modern FPGAs.

Because the TPS546D24A features a PMBus interface that provides a selectable internal compensation network, engineers can remove up to six external compensation components from the board, thereby reducing the size of the entire power supply solution for high-current FPGAs and ASICs by more than 10% (or 130 mm²) compared to discrete multiphase controllers.

In addition, with a low thermal resistance of 8.1°C per watt, it operates at a temperature 13°C lower than competing DC/DC converters, thereby improving the reliability of electronic devices operating in harsh, high-temperature environments such as baseband devices and automated test equipment.


Improved efficiency at high switching frequencies
Using high switching frequency DC/DC converters allows engineers to easily design high-bandwidth systems while reducing the footprint of the power supply.
The TPS546D24A provides a switching frequency of 1.5 MHz, so it can provide 40 A current per IC while reducing inductance and capacitance by up to one-third compared to similar converters.

Typically, higher switching frequencies have a negative impact on efficiency, but to mitigate this, the TPS546D24A is equipped with a 0.9mΩ low-side MOSFET, thereby achieving 3.5% higher efficiency than competing DC/DC buck converters.


Meeting voltage accuracy for FPGA power supplies
Although FPGAs are used in various applications, the voltage accuracy required to support the FPGA DC rail is very high.

The TPS546D24A has an output voltage error of less than 1%, so it can meet strict voltage tolerance requirements.

Furthermore, through the extensive PMBus command set and pin strapping configuration capabilities, engineers can monitor current more accurately to log errors and consequently avoid over-design.