Configurable ICs aim to displace catalogue power devices

Article By : Peter Clarke

AnDapt's line of configurable ICs combines power MOSFETs, analog and digital circuitry and can be used to create a wide variety of power circuits.

« Previously: Start-up rolls out configurable power management ICs
 

AnDapt's first family of power management ICs is in a 22V process suitable for 12V and lower power and consists of nine members with selections, four, eight and twelve power blocks of 1A, 3A and 6A current capacity each. The AmP8D1, AmP8D3 and AmP8D6 are available with the rest of the family expected before the end of 2016.

__Figure 1:__ *The nine chip 12V AmP family. (Source: AnDapt)*

The product family is offered in QFN packages with 6 x 6, 7 x 7 and 8 x 8 footprint sizes. Initial device AmP8DS6QF74 is available today, in a 74-pin, 8mm x 8mm x 0.85mm thermally enhanced QFN package. The lowest cost member of the family AmP8DP1QN52 is priced at $3.75 in 1,000-unit quantities. WebAmP tools and power components can be licensed today online and are available for a 30-day free trial period and $99 per month thereafter.

The AnDapt approach is applicable to analog, mixed-signal, RF and power circuitry, Shankar told EE Times Europe, but said that initially the company would focus on power management platform ICs to displace catalogue power devices.

"We have sampled seven customers in the data centre and networking equipment area and are focused initially on non-isolated DC to DC conversion," said Shankar. "However, we can do isolated conversion beyond 12V. At 60V for example we foresee demand in automotive and industrial." It seems clear that this would also apply to drones and IoT.

AnDapt was founded in January 2014 and raised a Series A round of finance of $9.7 million in October 2014. Key investors are Intel Capital, Altera, Cisco Systems Inc. and Vanguard, although Intel subsequently consolidated its holding by acquiring Altera.

AnDapt is not the first company to try applying programmability to the analog domain, which has not proved an easy market to crack. Anadigm Inc. (Mesa, Ariz.) was founded in 2000 and continues to offer field programmable analog arrays (FPAAs). Silego Inc. (Santa Clara, Calif.) offers configurable mixed-signal ICs (CMICs) that are "no-code" devices that include op amps, comparators, counters, ADCs, pulse width modulation, simple digital logic up to the complexity of an asynchronous state machine and in some case power transistors.

 
« Previously: Start-up rolls out configurable power management ICs