Power Management: Designing from a System-level Perspective

Peter Henry, Vice President, Power Management Group, Analog Devices, Inc.
EETimes (8/30/2010 2:25 PM EDT)

Power-management technology has undergone a sea change in the past 10 years. The wave of portable, personalized electronic products that has transformed the consumer market landscape has re-written the rules for power design, integration and efficiency by moving intelligent power management and system knowledge to the forefront of product design.

Contrast today’s power-management environment to the late decades of the last century.  The 1980’s and early 1990’s were dominated by NPN linear regulators, which are simple circuits that convert voltage levels and require very little intelligence. Also, because portable electronics were just coming into their own—and because power was cheap and plentiful—linear regulators had little reason to operate at high levels of efficiency.

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