Electronic – Utility of two pins requiring same voltage

displayinputpinout

I have a LED backlight driver, which has input pin assignment as:


Pin Function

1,2 12V Input

3 Brightness control
PWM : 100Hz~20KHz DC : 0.5V~2.5V

4,6 GND

5 ON/OFF Control 5V ON , 0V OFF


Why do pin 1 and 2 both require 12V input, what is the utility of that? Can somebody give insights on why didn't they use just one pin and give input internally using the same pin?

Link to the datasheet.

Best Answer

IC manufacturers use more than one pin on a device if the device is a high current device.

As a LED driver, it's likely a high-current device and thus needs more than 1 pin to share the current load through the device.

EDIT: After seeing the spreadsheet , it seems this particular device is not really very high power after all, at only 800mA total, so one further possibility is that the designers wanted to use the extra connections to power and ground to help dissipate heat from the chip to the PCB though the power leads.