Giving LEDs a boost

MIT-spinout Arctic Sand — now part of Peregrine Semiconductor — introduced a line of high-density buck converters, as well as the ARC1C0608  line of LED boost converters for mobile displays based on their new Transformative Integrative Power Solution architecture.

“This is not a process innovation,” says Steve Allen, VP of Sales and Marketing. “It is an architectural innovation and is, in my experience, the biggest thing in the power industry since FETs replaced bipolar transistors.”

The flexible and scalable, two-stage architecture includes a virtually loss-less charge pump technology with 98 percent conversion efficiency independent of the ratio between input and output. The entire power chain is designed using 5 V FETs and power conversion is accomplished by stepping down the voltage through the power chain which generates significantly less ripple than a single-stage architecture.

More info: LED driver ICs offer 1W power power savings in LED boost circuit