EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — International Rectifier, IR® (NYSE: IRF), a world leader in power management technology, today announced its innovative IRS2092 Class D Audio IC has won Electronic Product magazine’s Product of the Year Award.

The IC, together with IR’s line of digital audio MOSFETs, targets Class D audio amplifier designs from 50 to 500W, offering a flexible “building block” approach complete with protection, deadtime, and PWM modulator which can scale easily to address changing design needs by simply replacing MOSFETs.

“We thank the editors for the recognition and are pleased with the interest our latest Class D audio IC is receiving from engineers,” said David Tam, vice president of International Rectifier’s Energy-Saving Products group. “Audio designers are very interested in the IRS2092 IC because it takes much of the guesswork out of implementing an audio topology which may represent relatively new territory for them, yet offers audio efficiency and clear size advantages when compared to Class AB,” he added.

The chipset forms a Class D audio solution that is much smaller than a comparable Class AB design. In a 100W application, for example, the IRS2092 IC and IRF6645 DirectFET® MOSFETs reduce board size by 60% and eliminate 20% of the parts from the typical bill of materials.

Based upon a half bridge topology, the new audio driver IC integrates four essential functions for Class D design implementation including error amplifier, PWM comparator, gate driver, and robust protection circuitry. As a result, this compact 16-pin IC offers high noise immunity and reduced start and stop click noise, while greatly reducing some of the most complicated and costly design tasks such as overload protection. Key IRS2092 features include an analog PWM modulator with frequency up to 800 kHz, programmable bidirectional over-current protection (OCP) with self-reset control, under-voltage lockout protection (UVLO), and programmable preset deadtime for a scalable power design.

The IC may be paired with an extensive range of digital audio MOSFETs addressing output power from 50W to 500W. A two-channel reference design, featuring the new IC with a pair of IRF6645 DirectFET MOSFETs is also available, demonstrating an efficiency of 96% at 120W in the MOSFET stage, and a THD+N of 0.005% at 1 kHz, 60W, four ohms.

The editors at Electronic Products chose this year's winners based on significant advances in technology or its application, innovation in design, or a substantial gain in price and performance. The winners will be printed in the January 2008 issue of Electronic Products magazine. Hearst Business Communications, Inc., Garden City, New York, publishes Electronic Products, The Engineer's Magazine of Product Technology.