LED drivers offload display duties

A Maxim Integrated Products product story

Edited by the Electronicstalk editorial team Aug 22, 2005

The MAX6960-MAX6963 are feature-rich LED drivers that offload the display tasks from the microprocessor, simplifying design, reducing software overhead and improving time to market.

Maxim Integrated Products has released the MAX6960-MAX6963 compact cathode-row display drivers that interface microprocessors to 8 x 8 dot matrix red, green and yellow (R, G, Y) LED displays through a high-speed four-wire serial interface.

The MAX6960-MAX6963 are feature-rich LED drivers that offload the display tasks from the microprocessor, simplifying design, reducing software overhead and improving time to market for message board, gaming machine and audio/video equipment applications.

The MAX6960-MAX6963 feature LED fault detection, and provide both analogue and digital tile-segment current calibration to allow 8 x 8 displays from different batches.

The MAX6963 and MAX6962 drive single-colour displays with two-step intensity control, and the MAX6962 also offers four-step intensity control.

The MAX6961 and MAX6960 drive single-colour or RGY displays with two-step intensity control, and the MAX6960 also offers four-step intensity control.

Other driver features include automatic memory-map sharing and allocation between interconnected drivers, factory-trimmed 40 or 20mA peak segment current, and 256-step panel intensity control.

All devices operate at 2.7 to 3.6V and over a -40 to +125C temperature range.

The MAX6960-MAX6963 are offered in compact, high-heat-dissipation 44-pin QFN and MQFP packages.

The MAX6960-MAX6963 devices are available now at $6.75 (1000-up, FOB USA).

Evaluation kits for the MAX6960-MAX6963 are also available.