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Guide to Choosing the Best LDO for Your Application

Low dropout voltage regulators (LDOs) are common in many applications. State of the art Power-Management Integrated Circuits (PMICs) for smartphones and other portable devices include over a dozen LDOs. LDOs are also found integrated onto Microprocessors, Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) and in many other Systems on a Chip (SOCs). To know which LDO you need, you must first define the application of your LDO and then examine which parameters are most important when dealing with that application. With the multiple parameters that characterize a particular LDO, it is not easy to determine which LDO is best suited.

To help you figure this out, we have put together this reference. This guide presents a list of all the key LDO parameters along with their definitions, the most common applications of LDOs, and which parameters are critical for each.