INFINEON Technologies, represented by Insight Electronics , has announced a new family of devices that solves a two-pronged problem faced by designers of dc/dc converters for personal computer motherboards: supplying higher power while at the same time decreasing voltage.
The evolution of microprocessor chips has been marked by transistors continually getting smaller, which reduces the voltage required by individual transistors.
However, each new processor generation packs a greater number of transistors into each chip, so total power consumption has actually increased.
This places severe demands on dc/dc converters, which need to supply higher load currents.
The power dissipation of dc/dc converters results in the heating of converter components, which affects their electrical behavior over time and makes efficiency improvement a major requirement.
Minimising losses within dc/dc converters is therefore a key to achieving high system reliability.
The new Infineon OptiMOS 2 25-volt (V) N-channel MOSFETs (metal-oxide semiconductor field-effect transistors) allow efficient power conversion of a 12V input into the 1.2V to 2.0V levels required by the latest generations of microprocessors.
The OptiMOS 2 devices are the next generation of Infineon's power MOSFETs. They provide exceptionally low gate charge, fast switching times, low thermal resistance, and a high degree of ruggedness, making them ideally suited for applications in which power management and efficiency are critical.
Infineon's N-channel OptiMOS 2 process technology achieves the lowest available on-resistance per silicon area, an outstandingly low gate charge, almost un-measurable reverse recovery charge, and low internal gate resistance.