> Is that what you plan to speak on at Masters'?

No.  My Masters course is about using 10Fs as switching power supply
controllers.  This is the other end of the spectrum from doing fancy
computation for a power supply.

The 10F204 is a great little power supply controller.  It has a time base,
comparator with internal absolute voltage reference, nice clean on/off
digital outputs, and enough pins to allow for an enable input and power good
output.  The advantage of software control is you can perform special
startup logic, guarantee the switch on time is always within some bounds,
etc.  The $.50 price of a 10F versus the $2.00 price of an analog switcher
chip more than makes up for having to add the pass element.  Some switcher
controllers don't have one either.  In a lot of cases, the pass element only
costs $.05-$.20.  You can also make various tradeoffs in the firmware to
taylor the supply to quick response to sudden load, good efficiency,
tweaking both pulse width and frequency on the fly, etc.  Switching
frequencies of 100KHz are readily attainable.  After all, that's a whole 10
instructions per loop.


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consultant in 2004 program year.  http://www.embedinc.com/products
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