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Altera_Forum
Honored Contributor
9 years agoGalfonz - Are you talking about the Enpirion parts? We use a lot of them and although I'm not involved in purchasing I don't think we've ever had any lead time problems, and we would not be using them if they were not price-competitive with Linear, TI, Analog, etc.
sherif123 - There should be no inherent reason that you can't use a single chip that produces multiple rails. Just make sure the multi-rail chip meets all the current and sequencing requirements from Altera. The parts from Analog Devices look pretty nice but they require external inductors and other components. Those components can take up a lot of board space, and regulators with external inductors usually have very specific and careful layout requirements. The nice thing about the Enpirion parts is that they have no external inductors. Makes them very easy to use. Obviously some trade-offs here, but you need to look at the total solution before you assume that the single 4-rail Analog Devices chip will be smaller (and/or cheaper) than multiple 1-rail parts.