Nonisolated POL convertors grow in popularity

A new global market demand analysis will be devoted exclusively to DC/DC convertors, DC/DC regulators and PWM/PFM controllers.

The most compelling changes in the switching power supply industry are occurring at the distributed power level.

The proliferation of different voltages at higher current levels has changed the way distributed bus architectures (DBA) are designed.

Traditionally, bus architectures for distributing power use a central power source that converts the incoming line voltage separately to each required regulated DC output, then distributes the regulated voltages individually to every point of use within the equipment.

Now, however, designers are moving toward distributed bus architectures (DBAs).

A distributed bus architecture is one where voltage is generated from a front-end DC bus and converted into the required voltage at the point of use; this is known as point of load (POL) regulation.

These nonisolated POL DC/DC convertors are small in size and placed close to their load on a board, thus offering several performance enhancements over traditional, isolated DC/DC convertors.

Nonisolated POL convertors have no transformers or electrical isolation, allowing them to be smaller and less expensive.

Rather than distributing filtered and regulated voltages from a central source, nonisolated convertors operate at a higher efficiency than isolated convertors by being closer to the point of use.

Nonisolated POL convertors lack the components and complexity of isolated convertors and have the ability to easily adjust output voltage to accommodate different loads.

In addition, when using distributed power architectures, the failure of a DC/DC convertor only affects that single module.

Although the concept of implementing true onboard distributed power is not new, it is becoming increasingly common as suppliers embrace the idea and begin their own product rollouts.

Due to this trend, Venture Development Corporation has proposed a global market demand analysis for DC/DC convertors, DC/DC regulators and PWM/PFM controllers exclusively.

The proposal for this study may be viewed on the VDC website.

Back to top