a fault known as "shootthrough". The simplest technique for avoiding shootthrough is a time delay between the turn-off of S1 to the turn-on of S2, and vice versa. However, setting this time delay long enough to ensure that S1 and S2 are never both on will itself result in excess power loss. An improved technique for preventing this condition is known as adaptive "non-overlap" protection, in which the voltage at the switch node (the point where S1, S2 and L are joined) is sensed to determine its state. When the switch node voltage passes a preset threshold, the time delay is started. The driver can thus adjust to many types of switches without the excessive power loss this flexibility would cause with a fixed non-overlap time. Both low side and high side switches may be turned off in response to a load transient and the body diode in the low side MOSFET or another diode in parallel with it becomes active. The higher voltage drop on the low side switch is then of benefit, helping to reduce current output and meet the new load requirement sooner. Multiphase buck The multiphase buck converter is a circuit topology where basic buck converter circuits are placed in parallel between the input and load. Each of the n "phases" is turned on at equally spaced intervals over the switching period. This circuit is typically used with the synchronous buck topology, described above. This type of converter can respond to load changes as quickly as if it switched n times faster, without the increase in switching losses that would cause. Thus, it can respond to rapidly changing loads, such as modern microprocessors. There is also a significant decrease in switching ripple. Not only is there the decrease due to the increased effective frequency, but any time that n times the duty cycle is an integer, the switching ripple goes to 0; the rate at which the inductor current is increasing in the phases which are switched on exactly matches the rate at which it is decreasing in the phases which are switched off. Another advantage is that the load current is split among the n phases of the multiphase converter. This load splitting allows the heat losses on each of the switches to be spread across a larger area. This circuit topology is used in computer motherboards to convert the 12 VDC power supply to