X-IFU (X-ray Integral Field Unit) is one of the scientific instruments, which will be placed on the ESA's spacecraft ATHENA (Advanced Telescope for High ENergy Astrophysics).

X-IFU is built by an international consortium of 13-countries led under the responsibility of the Principal Investigator Prof. Didier Barret from Institute of Research in Astrophysics and Planetology in Toulouse, France. X-IFU consortium has set an ambitious goal: to provide the scientific comunity with the revolutionary instrument to unveil the secrets of the hot and energetic University. WFI consortium is led by the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany.

Polish team from CBK is involved in technical part of experiment. It is under CBK responsibility to develop the system of power distribution PDU (Power Distribution Unit) between individual X-IFU instrument modules.

X-IFU will play a unique role in the study of hot and energetic Universe. The total power to be distributed in X-IFU will be around 3kW. In addition to the usual distribution power, PDU must also protect the other subsystems from excessive power consumption in the event of failure of these subsystems. Latch-Up Current Limiters (LCL) will be implemented to fulfill this requirement.