Patent ID: 7852055

Claim:
A switching regulator, comprising: a switching transistor to switch in accordance with an input control signal; an inductor to be charged with an input voltage in response to a switching operation by the switching transistor; a switch signal generator configured to detect an inductor current flowing through the inductor from a voltage at a connection point between the switching transistor and the inductor and output a predetermined switch signal after a time in accordance with the input voltage when detecting the inductor current is zero, said switch signal generator comprising: a current detector configured to detect the inductor current flowing through the inductor from the voltage at the connection point between the switching transistor and the inductor and output a predetermined binary detection signal when detecting the inductor current is zero; and a signal generator configured to cause the predetermined binary detection signal to be delayed for a delay time based on the input voltage, and output the predetermined binary detection signal as the switch signal when the predetermined binary detection signal is output from the current detector; and a controller configured to perform a PWM control or a PFM control on the switching transistor in accordance with the switch signal output from the switch signal generator to keep an output voltage output from the output terminal at a predetermined constant voltage, wherein the controller performs the PFM control when the predetermined switch signal is continuously input thereto from the switch signal generator one or more times.