Before diving into this section, let’s take a quick look back at Part 1: Brushless DC motors are cool (and they can even help you make friends). While it's easy to talk about features and benefits, engineers want to see real-world designs. In this post, I’ll directly compare discrete and integrated gate drive architectures to highlight the differences at the board level.
When comparing schematics and layouts, two key metrics stand out: component count and solution size. Component count is straightforward once the schematic is done. But estimating solution size is more complex. I’ve often seen people just use the dimensions of the ICs themselves, which isn’t accurate—those measurements don’t account for spacing between components or the routing on the board.
I spent time using local design software to create parallel schematics and layouts for both discrete and integrated gate driver solutions in a brushless DC motor application. For the discrete option, I used TI’s gate driver, and for the integrated one, I chose the DRV8320. I also used standard QFN-packaged NexFET™ power MOSFETs. Although this design uses standard FETs, TI recently introduced vertical half-bridge power blocks that could save even more space. This project pushed my layout skills to the limit, but I hope these visuals will help anyone looking to compare the two approaches.
This project might seem simple at first, but it actually required a lot of thoughtful design work. As you can imagine, to keep things simple, I went with a two-layer board without an inner layer. That meant more effort was needed during layout. Also, the gate drive components on the discrete setup and the IDRIVE pin on the integrated driver had to be carefully adjusted to get good rise and fall times from the external FETs. There were also many small tweaks in the layout to minimize the overall size of each solution.
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