Just when you thought all new voltage regulator chips were using switched-mode technology along comes X-REL semiconductor with a linear design. The company specialises in manufacturing high-reliability, high-temperature devices; its XTRM prefixed components have an operational temperature range from −60 to +230ºC.

The recently announced XTR70010 Ultra Low Drop Out linear regulator has a dropout voltage of just 0.9 V per Amp of output current at 230ºC. It operates with an input voltage between 2.8 and 5.5 V and can supply more than 1.5 A with no requirement on the minimum dropout at lower current. The output voltage can be defined with a resolution of 100 mV between 0.5 to 3.6 V (a total of 32 levels) using internal settings or by using a conventional external voltage divider network.

The ability of the XTR70010 to operate from input voltages as low as 2.8V together with its ultra-low dropout capability makes it ideal for power supplies for microprocessors, memories, sensors and for post regulation after a low voltage Point-of-Load (POL) DC-to-DC converters. Among its features, the XTR70010 has hiccup over-current protection, low-power mode, under-voltage-lockout (UVLO), thermal shut-down with variable threshold, output overshoot limitation, protection against badly decoupled input networks, soft startup and soft shut-down.