Patent 7449948 was granted and assigned to Yamaha (yacht) on November, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
PWM signals having different polarities input from a +IN terminal and a −IN terminal are output to a pre-driver and a switching signal generation circuit. The pre-driver outputs to switches a gate signal for actuating a driver obtained from the input PWM signal. The switching signal generation circuit inputs a PWM signal and outputs switching signals. A switching circuit, on input of the switching signals, changes over switches so that the gate signal is output to a first P-channel MOS transistor and a first N-channel MOS transistor in case the PWM signal is input from the +IN side, and to a second P-channel MOS transistor and a second N-channel MOS transistor in case the PWM signal is input from the −IN side.