12V POL converter SoC offers attractive figure of merit combination in size, efficiency, ripple, components, and cost

Hamption, New Jersey—Engineering design is all about tradeoffs and balance, and matching available choices to your project priorities, that's not news. For designers developing 12V distributed point-of-load DC/DC converters, the choices begin with discrete-component designs, versus highly integrated SoCs (system on chip), versus modules and power SiPs (single-inline packages).

Enpirion Inc. maintains that the fully integrated converters in their EN2300 family, supporting 4A, 6A, 9A, and 15A loads, have the best figure of merit (FOM) among these various alternatives across key performance dimensions, and pretty darn good ones in the rest. These factors include final design size, height, efficiency at peak load, output ripple, EMI, number of external components, and total cost.

Each member in the Enpirion EN2300 family of

POL DC/DC converters is a highly integrated package

of active and passive components (click here to enlarge).

Input range is 4.5V to 14V, and output range is 0.6V to 5V, with output voltage user-programmable via a resistor divider. If you need more current, up to four of the 15A versions can be paralleled in a single-master/multiple-slave topology. Within the SoC are a pair of MOSFETs, controller IC, high-frequency filter capacitors, and requisite inductors for this 2MHz converter. The vendor also claims that the integral MOSFET switches are both superior to comparable GaN approaches, but at the lower cost of silicon.

My colleague Margery Connor at sibling publication EDN has the details, click on "Enpirion DC-DC modules use LDMOS to raise volts and efficiency, shrink size" to see her report and details.