Nuremberg, Germany: At the recent PCIM power electronics event, Intersil unveiled its ZL2008, a high-performance, synchronous step-down dc-dc converter with pin-strap compensation and current sharing. It uses Zilker’s patented Digital-DC technology and is designed for digital power-supply modules and system designers who need easy-to-use, board-level, power- supply configuration.
The compensation and transient response of the ZL2008 can be optimised for load current and output capacitance by adjusting resistor pin-straps. Current sharing of up to eight devices in parallel with individual phase enable/disable pins is easily configurable.
Advanced power-management features such as digital soft-start delay and ramp, sequencing, tracking, and margining are fast and easy to implement, says Intersil. Power-supply reliability and availability can be improved through real-time monitoring by using the I2C/SMBus interface with the PMBus protocol.
The ZL2008 includes the Digital- DC bus for seamless interoperability between Zilker Labs devices to simplify power and fault management.
The synchronous buck converter integrates 3A MOSFET drivers that operate on single supply from 3V to 14V. Output voltages range from 0.54V to 5.5V with ±1% output voltage accuracy and 200kHz to 1.4MHz operation. In addition, there’s current sharing with individual phase enable/disable pins, optional I²C/SMBus configuration, and external clock synchronization.
Power-management features include coincidental/ratiometric tracking, power up/down sequencing, voltage margining, and voltage and current monitoring. Another key feature is internal temperature monitoring.