Many modern servers, as well as telecom and networking equipment, have multiple voltage regulators on the system board to provide power to ICs or sub-circuits. These power rails often have very tight voltage tolerances (<1%). Power integrity measurement, such as measuring ripple voltage in full bandwidth, becomes crucial to meet the system design requirement. This article provides measurement gui...

Power failures tend to cause a domino effect of disruptions, resulting in system failures and data loss, as well as damage to servers and equipment. This article describes how to use the MP5515 to protect solid-state drives (SSDs) against sudden power failure. There are three main issues if an SSD experiences a power failure: The MP5515 is an input power conditioning PMIC that provides a compact...

The switch node of a switching regulator or power converter circuit is a critical conduction path that requires special attention when designing the PCB layout. This circuit node is where one or more power semiconductor switches (such as a MOSFET or diode) connect to a magnetic energy-storing device (such as an inductor or transformer winding). The switching signals of this circuit node contain fa...

There is much confusion regarding how to make meaningful design decisions when converting a datasheet’s thermal resistance parameters. This introductory article will help today’s hardware engineers understand how to decipher the thermal parameters found in datasheets — including whether to choose theta vs. psi, how to calculate these values, and most importantly, how to apply the...

An unstable power supply can cause severe system issues, such as audible noise from the passive components, unexpected jittering in the switching frequency, extreme oscillations on the output voltage during load transient events, and failures in the semiconductor switches. While there are various reasons for instability, an un-tuned compensation network accounts for majority of instability issues ...

The high power density requirement and board-level space constraints in modern applications — such as lighting, ADAS, and USB — call for higher integration in buck regulators. There is a trend to integrate MOSFETs and compensation networks inside the chip. This integration of the compensation network’s passive components saves cost, board space, and design iterations. However, it...