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Online power-supply-design tool evaluates 48 billion designs

By Paul Rako, Technical Editor -- EDN, 11/9/2009

National Semiconductor has made significant improvements to its free Webench online-design tool, which operates with most popular Web browsers. You access the tool using a one-time transfer of a database in Adobe Flash to your computer. The tool provides a speedy response as you experiment with various design configurations. It includes the new Visualizer tool to chart efficiency, footprint, and cost variables. An optimizer dial lets you establish your preference for trade-offs among footprint, efficiency, and cost.

You set a dial that causes the tool to generate 50 to 70 designs from 48 billion combinations. You can select from 25 power-supply topologies, including buck, boost, buck-boost, SEPIC (single-ended-primary-inductance converter), and flyback. The tool has a database of 21,000 components from 110 manufacturers and is suitable for designs with input voltages of 1 to 100V, output voltages of 0.6 to 300V, and power as high as 300W. It can help you design for efficiency as high as 96% and switching frequencies as great as 3 MHz. The smallest footprint design is 14×14 mm. Webench requires no registration until you run simulation or thermal analysis; at that point, you need to register for a user account to store the results. The improved version with reduced registration requirements is available now.