Infineon Technologies AG is launching a new generation of its multichannel SPI high-side power controllers SPOC™. Today, this product family is leading the market for multichannel high-side smart switches in automotive exterior lighting applications. The new SPOC™ series is designed to address interior and exterior lighting applications but also power distribution applications such as door lock and seat heating, as well as lighting and power distribution loads for e-bikes.
Similar to the body control module (BCM) of 15 years ago, other in-car ECUs such as junction, fuse and relay boxes now start to become increasingly complex, supporting more features. “With our new flexible configurable, highly integrated multi-channel SPOC products we will help our customers reduce hardware variants and module size, thus lowering costs and allowing for smaller vehicle packaging locations,” says Andreas Doll, Vice President and General Manager of Infineon’s Body Power Business Unit. “In 2019, we plan to ship roughly 100 million SPOC products. Statistically, every new car in the world will be equipped with our solution”.
A number of new features make the SPOC+2 family more flexible for implementation within the application. For example, previous generations were equipped with two pre-defined modes for either bulb or LED loads. Now, important device parameters including slew rate, load current sense ratio (K ILIS) and overload detection current can be configured individually for each of the up to six channels. Moreover, this comes without negative effects on the on-state resistance R DS(ON). Furthermore, the new concept allows two channels to drive one load in parallel. Consequently, the range of supported currents is now twice as wide: 1.5A to 14A (previously 1.5A to 7A).
With the new generation, customers can easily switch between all products of the SPOC+2 family, for example in case of late requirement changes from an OEM. All products use a common pin out, a common software concept and now also the same package. Compared to the previous generation, Infineon reduced the package size for the high-end product BTS72220-4ESA/E by more than 50 percent. Therefore, with a body size of 52mm 2 all products of the SPOC+2 family need half the footprint area compared to alternative devices on the market with the ability to switch up to 214W.
This information is available online at
http://www.infineon.com/cms/en/about-infineon/press/market-news/2018/INFATV201810-002.html
