Analog & Power Blog - Blog

Renesas has recently introduced a number of new ICs for microcontroller power supply systems. When you have an MCU with standby modes in the nanoamp range, how much energy does that save when the multiple switching and LDO supplies that support it stay fully powered up? Not so much. That’s the problem that Renesas’ new Simple Power Supply ICs address.

The RAA23012x and RAA23013x are single-channel and the…

USB started out simply as a convenient way to connect peripherals to PCs. While it’s achieved its goal of being universal in that regard, in the process it’s also become the universal way to charge cell phones, tablets, and a wide range of portable electronic gadgets. Just as Power over Ethernet (PoE) became an important if unintended benefit, the same has happened with power over USB.

USB 1.1 (1998) only…

Mini-POL (where POL = Point of Load) is an high efficiency load converter IC featuring wafer-level chip size packaging, providing a 75% reduction in typical size as well as very low thermal resistance. These are just a few reasons why our Mini-POL was a finalist in the prestigious 2013 EE Times & EDN ACE Awards. Want to find out some more?

Recently, ICs have moved to operating at lower voltages and higher currents…

Three-phase motors used in electric vehicles (EVs and HEVs) present some challenging drive requirements, not the least of which involves protecting the drive circuits from overvoltage spikes across the IGBTs that can be caused by lead and wire inductances. Renesas’ line of intelligent power devices (IPDs) with overheat and over-voltage protection have been replacing power MOSFETs in high-voltage, high-reliability…

When new server farms need to be located next to power plants, powering them is clearly a problem, at both the macro (site) and micro levels—‘micro’ here meaning the rack and server level. To address the latter problem Renesas has introduced a new series of low R_DS(on) N-channel MOSFETs designed for mission-critical high-current switching applications—such as the low-voltage, high-current DC power bus…

Nothing frustrates a cell phone user more than a dead battery. Swapping out batteries is an increasingly rare option, so fast charging is the order of the day. However it takes a well designed charge-management IC to quickly charge a large cell phone battery without causing it to overheat or expire prematurely.

Renesas has introduced a Lithium-Ion battery charge IC with support for large-current rapid charging. The