Intelligent power switches for automotive applications

The automotive industry´s demands for efficient, self protected switches at economic price levels are being answered by the emergence of a variety of intelligent power switches (IPS) . Using appropriate technology these can be made with on resistances per unit area (Of the output device) equivalent to state of the art discrete devices. Future improvements that can be expected include: further optimisation of the power output device tracking discrete device developments and higher density logic permitting more `on-chip´ intelligence. In the future, one can expect to see the emergence of power IC cell libraries allowing `application specific IPSs´ to be adapted and designed using similar CAD techniques to todays ASICs