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Intersil's New LED Driver Family Features Ultra-Low Dimming to Maximize Battery Life in Portable Products
ISL97671/2/3/4 Series of 6-channel LED Drivers Reduce Flickering, Shimmering and Other Visual Artifacts that Can Affect Images
MILPITAS, CA, October 25, 2010 – A new family of innovative multi-channel LED drivers from Intersil Corporation (NASDAQ Global Select: ISIL), provides an ultra-low dimming capability that can significantly extend battery life in notebook, netbook and tablet computers.
The new, highly integrated ISL97671/2/3/4 series reduces undesirable backlight-induced visual artifacts such as flickering, shimmering and banding that are observed when using conventional LED drivers. The devices minimize power loss by using a proprietary dynamic headroom control circuit to detect the highest voltage LED string, and then regulate the boost output to the minimum required voltage. The devices drive up to six 40mA strings of LEDs from a 4.5V to 26V input. A highly accurate LED current matching circuit achieves an industry-best ±0.7% current matching between LED strings. The ISL97671/2/3/4 series also includes an integrated boost converter to step-up the input voltage to support LED stack voltages up to 45V.
Adaptive Boost Control Circuit Regulates Output Voltage
The drivers maintain dimming linearity even at low LED PWM duty cycles by using an adaptive boost control circuit that regulates the output voltage even when the LEDs are off for most of the PWM cycle. Using this proprietary boost architecture, the ISL97671/2/3/4 series responds to very low PWM duty cycles and provides dimming down to just 0.007% of full brightness with a 200Hz PWM frequency. Dimming may be controlled by direct PWM dimming or by using 8-bit digital dimming via an I2C/SMBus interface.
The devices' phase shift capability can turn LED strings on at a specified phase, reducing peak input current by distributing channel currents within the dimming period. This feature contrasts with conventional multi-channel LED drivers which turn all LED strings on and off simultaneously.
To ensure the highest reliability, the series includes extensive protection features such as over-temperature protection, over-voltage protection and LED open/short circuit protection. The devices integrate power MOSFETs for the boost converter and channel regulation circuitry, providing design flexibility in a very compact solution.
Pricing and Availability
The ISL97671/2/3/4 series is available in a compact 20-lead 4mm x 3mm QFN package. Price in 1,000-piece quantities begins at $1.80 each. For more information please visit:
ISL97671: http://www.intersil.com/products/deviceinfo.asp?pn=ISL97671
ISL97672: http://www.intersil.com/products/deviceinfo.asp?pn=ISL97672
ISL97673: http://www.intersil.com/products/deviceinfo.asp?pn=ISL97673
ISL97674: http://www.intersil.com/products/deviceinfo.asp?pn=ISL97674
To view a high-resolution downloadable photo, please visit Intersil's photo room at: http://www.intersil.com/pressroom/hr_photos/20101025_ISL97671-4_hr.jpg.
About Intersil
Intersil Corporation is a leader in the design and manufacture of high-performance analog, mixed signal and power management semiconductors. The Company's products address some of the fastest growing markets within the communications, computing, consumer and industrial industries. For more information about Intersil or to find out how to become a member of our winning team, visit the Company's web site and career page at www.intersil.com.
Intersil and the Intersil logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Intersil Corporation. All other brands, product names and marks are or may be trademarks or registered trademarks used to identify products or services of their respective owners.
