Yes TI did purchase Power Trends [About 3 years ago. :) ].

These products are fine units. For manufacturing volumes below 1000->5000 year I suspect that its almost an even comparison of using these versus trying to build these yourself. And thats not even taking into the account the cost of engineering to designing your own.

We designed these into a DSP based product that was a dual T1 phone line interface board for a Video Conferencing system. At the time TI told us that if we couldn't find a module from the extensive list of their standard parts that they would do a custom unit for a rather niminal NRE charge. (The NRE charge was less then the cost of engineering design time to roll our own).

I do have one comment about the TI switchers though. If you are working on some product design that needs switcher power functions but the space that the board mounts in is very tight and there is little clearance space over the boards, then the TI solution may not be the best. In these cases most times I have specified an off board switcher that can mount by other means. The best source I know for DC-DC converters of this latter type is www.astrodyne.com.

Michael Karas