The L6353 is a smart silicon device which integrates all the circuitry for a versatile and rugged gate driver. The chip implements several features such as: an easy-to-link signal source by means of either an optocoupler or pulse transformer, a two-step turn-on procedure of the external power switch (dedicated to IGBT driving), a switch dropout voltage monitoring, the possibility to give a negative bias to the gate, the external programmability of safety thresholds and delays, the syncronisation and edge aligning and a powerful buffer of ±8A with split output.