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Wherever theres a need of energy, theres a power supply. We are in the age of electricity: the majority of energy we use is generated, stored, transferred and applied in the form of electricity. From cell phones, computers, TV sets and home appliances we use everyday to and to the telecom base stations, server data centers , video broadcasting equipment and various industrial and infrastructural applications, electronic systems are everywhere. A power converter is an electronic circuit that processes and provides power to such a system, or a load, from a power source. So, DC-DC converters is the kind of converters that delivers power in direct current (DC) and controlled voltage level from a direct current (DC) source. Almost all electronic products today use components that are designed to operate under DC supply, and they have varied requirements for voltage/current level, supply tolerance and dynamic performance. Also, the DC source could have a varied voltage range. The DC-DC converter should be able to regulate the output voltage and meet the requirements. Based on the applications, there are various types of DC-DC converters.

In general, there are two basic types of converters: the linear type and the switcher type. The power delivery in linear regulators is continuous: the pass elements that regulate the current flow from source to load operates in linear region, which is similar to a variable resistor and control the output voltage by adjusting its resistance. For switcher type converters, the power delivery is in bursts: the pass elements are switchers that turn on and off by cycles. A switching regulator must have energy storing components like capacitors or inductors that can temporally store and release energy between on and off cycle. The linear regulators offer small physical size and low noise operation, but usually have low efficiency. In the case of a switching regulator, the switcher is more efficient, but at the expense of adding switching noise to the system and requiring additional components. The linear type can be further divided into voltage references and LDO (low dropout regulators).

There are two main types of the switching regulators inductor based (inductive) and charge pump (capacitive or inductor-less).
Usually, the IC chips with integrated switching FETs are called regulators, whereas those using external FETs are called controllers.

A DC-DC converter is designed for certain output voltage and maximum load for a certain input voltage range. It is important to know the essentials of a converters characteristics before the power supply design or selection.

Efficiency is the ratio of output power to input power. It is a good criteria to evaluate a converters performance. Losses occur in the current-flowing resistors, in the magneticfield-changing inductor cores, when the switch switches. Therere numerous ways to improve the converter efficiency, but theres no 100% efficiency. Steady state indicates that the input voltage and output load condition are stable. The converter should be able to provide a stable output voltage. However, some regulators will have ripples in the output voltage caused by switching or coupling from other sources. The transient response is the change of the output voltage and current over time as response to a change in the input voltage or load. Specifically, the response to input voltage is called the line regulation and the response to load change is called the load regulation. Usually, the design specification has restriction on the voltage variation and settling time under transient. In converter design, therere always tradeoffs between performance and other practical considerations like size, cost. The design with best performance is not always the best design.

In the inductive switcher the energy is pulsed from Vin to Vout through the inductor. The inductor acts as a reservoir of energy during every pulse. As the voltage reaches the desired level, only the energy needed by the load needs to be drawn from Vin and transferred to Vout. The output capacitor acts like a filter to smooth out the power transition between input and output. This energy transfer procedure is closely controlled by the switchers. Thanks to the advancement in integrated circuit (IC) technology, fast and precise control of the switching is made possible that we can even make a power supply small enough to fit into the portable device yet powerful enough to supply tens of ampere current feeding the need of the microprocessor.

The charge pump switcher is also known as switched capacitor regulator.

The table shows the comparing between the 3 converter types in typical case. It can be seen that theres no absolute winner. The lowest cost solution will, most often, be the Linear regulators. However, this is not the most power efficient and could create local heating in case of high load applications. The higher the difference between Vin and Vout, worse the linear regulator efficiency.

The inductor in the inductive (also known as Magnetic) switcher could consume a lot of board space but this is the most power efficient configuration. For high current and large Vin-to-Vout variation, switching regulators are preferred to achieve high efficiency.
The charge pump (also known as switched capacitor) configuration provides smaller and fewer external components than the inductive switcher and better efficiency than the linear regulator.