Analog Devices' Power Management Chips

With the exception of solar power, just about any power source causes some kind of pollution - even if the only result you see is a mailbox polluted with high electric bills. Analog Devices is working on gadgets that lessen the power drain and just let us know about some new additions to its anyCAP LDO (low dropout regulator) line of power management chips. The first pair of chips is the ADP3338 and ADP3339 1 amp and 1.5 amp LDOs. ADI thinks the chips are well suited for cable boxes, audio/entertainment systems, power sources for embedded DSP and microcontroller-based systems, wireless base stations, USB (Universal Serial Bus) hubs, external DSL/cable modems, and routers. ADI also just released the ADP3333 and ADP3334 chips, which provide accuracy of 1.8 percent and low dropout voltage, featuring output currents of 300 and 500 milliamps respectively. The devices also include a safety current limit, thermal overload protection, and a shutdown feature. In shutdown mode, the ground current is reduced to less than 1 microamp. ADI thinks these chips would be of benefit to PCMCIA cards, power sources for embedded DSP and microcontroller-based systems, PDAs, networking systems, external modems, portable CDs, MP3 players and cable set-top boxes.