Online Design Environment Matches Industry-Leading LEDs with PowerWise Energy-Efficient LED Drivers
National Semiconductor Corporation (NYSE:NSM) today introduced its light-emitting diode (LED) WEBENCH® online design environment that helps engineers select from and design with more than 200 high-brightness LEDs in minutes.
Products from Avago Technologies, Cree, Lite-On, Nichia, OSRAM and Philips Lumileds are compared across multiple parameters, including light output, color, footprint, viewing angle, current and power rating. A unique ‘Build It!’ feature ships a custom prototype kit to the engineer within 24 hours.
“LED solutions demand a system-level approach,” said Kai-Chong Cheng, senior marketing manager for the Solid-State Illumination Division at Avago Technologies. “National Semiconductor’s easy-to-use LED WEBENCH design environment pairs a variety of Avago’s high-brightness LED products with drivers from National, providing a complete LED solution to the design engineer.”
With National’s LED WEBENCH suite of tools, engineers can configure a system with up to 60 LEDs in serial or parallel strings. With a single keystroke, the LED WEBENCH tool matches an LED with one of National’s PowerWise® energy-efficient LED drivers and creates an optimized power supply circuit. The engineer can easily “dial-in” their size and efficiency requirements, and then simulate the circuit behavior under dynamic conditions, including start-up, steady state, pulse-width modulation dimming and line transient. After fine-tuning the system in just minutes, the ‘BuildIt!’ feature provides a complete bill of materials for the LED circuit and the ability to quickly ship a custom prototype kit containing the selected LED, PC board, driver IC and passive components.
“National’s LED WEBENCH tool enables the design engineer to optimize a design in minutes versus investing weeks in tedious bench work,” said Paul Thieken, Cree director of product marketing for XLamp® LEDs. “In the design environment, an engineer can easily select one of Cree’s XLamp power LEDs and quickly create a design that includes the optimum driver and passive components.”
LED WEBENCH Tool Value Comparisons:
Luminous Flux 1-700 lumens
Colors red, orange, amber, yellow, green, blue and white
Footprints 12 mm(2) to 450 mm(2)
Viewing Angles 60 degrees -150 degrees
Current 20 mA to 1A
Watts 12 mW to 27W
“Based on a study of users, LED WEBENCH saves 32 engineering hours in the selection, design and build of a power supply,” said Phil Gibson, vice president of technical sales and Web tools at National Semiconductor. “Since no one can dedicate four days of solid work on anything, this translates into a project that takes several weeks of calendar time. National’s LED WEBENCH tool enables the design engineer to complete this process in just minutes.”
The LED WEBENCH toolset works seamlessly with National’s other WEBENCH tools for power, signal path design, audio, amplifiers and active filters, including National’s Analog University® online learning facility. To try any of National’s WEBENCH design tools, go to http://www.national.com/webench. For more information on LEDs from Avago Technologies, visit http://www.national.com/avago. For more information on LEDs from Cree, visit http://www.national.com/cree.
National’s WEBENCH environment eliminates the need for a design engineer to perform tedious hand calculations and includes extensive online tutorials in analog design. The tools offer instant access to the latest SPICE models, parametric data and package information, enabling designers to simultaneously compare the performance of multiple devices in multiple circuit requirements. National’s products in the WEBENCH environment ship within 24 hours worldwide.
National solves power management design problems in space- and energy-constrained applications from feature-rich handheld devices through large line-powered systems. From the novice power designer to the power expert, National’s products, people and design tools enable customers to design green-powered systems with complex power supplies in the shortest amount of time. High-performance products include switching regulators such as National’s flagship SIMPLE SWITCHER® family, and application-specific products including white-LED drivers and Power-over-Ethernet controllers. More information about National’s power management products is available at http://www.national.com/power .
Availability and Pricing:
Available now, the LM3401 is priced at 75 cents each and the LM3405A is $1.30 in 1,000-unit quantities.
About National’s PowerWise Brand:
National’s PowerWise brand reflects the company’s energy-efficient product portfolio. It signifies products with outstanding performance-to-power at the component level, as well as products that provide an outstanding, energy-efficient solution when coupled with other National parts. National’s PowerWise family of products features energy-efficient power management, operational amplifiers, interface and data conversion products. For more information about National’s PowerWise brand, visit: http://national.com/powerwise .
About National Semiconductor:
National Semiconductor, the industry's premier analog company, creates high-value analog devices and subsystems. National's leading-edge products include power management circuits, display drivers, audio and operational amplifiers, interface products and data conversion solutions. National's key analog markets include wireless handsets, displays, communications infrastructure, medical, automotive, industrial, and test and measurement applications. Headquartered in Santa Clara, Calif., National reported sales of $1.93 billion for fiscal 2007, which ended May 27, 2007. Additional company and product information is available at http://www.national.com .
