Digital Power Helps Get Products to Market More Quickly

Digital Power Helps Get Products to Market More Quickly Power engineers have bigger and bigger challenges. Designs are more complex as the performance and capabilities of integrated circuits continues to increase. As part of todays design constraints, engineers must juggle many different parameters at once. They must manage a multitude of timing and sequencing issues while simultaneously worrying about thermal ramifications and individual component variances. Additionally, many power management functions that were historically optional are now required features in current generation devices. Modern devices also have lower voltage requirements in order to meet the demands for faster and more efficient data processing. These devices operate at higher frequency and draw increasingly higher currents adding additional layers of concern in managing a design. Power requirements have correspondingly increased in complexity with todays high performance signal processing ICs requiring different voltages for the core and I/O. FPGAs, DSPs, microcontrollers, and microprocessors can coexist within a single system and each may have different voltage needs. FPGAs alone can commonly require three to four voltage rails which need to be brought up and down in a specific sequence. As one looks at the entire system, the number of power rails can quickly escalate. For example, a low end Ethernet switch may have as many as 40 different voltage rails on a single board. This increased number of rails provides new challenges for the design engineer in managing both sequencing and timing to ensure system operation reliability.

Yet another challenge facing todays engineer relates to component variations. These variations may occur on an individual part basis through different tolerances or through the use of multiple vendors. They may also occur through changes in temperature as well as aging of the components. The output filter capacitance can therefore vary quite dramatically and engineers have traditionally had to design for worst case solutions through fixed compensation. Such design practices are inherently un-optimal and can compromise system reliability and efficiency. It is also a time consuming process to tune the compensation to account for changes that occur during the design. Every time a component changes during the design process, the power engineer must re-tune the control loop. As the markets have evolved, time to market has become increasingly important as well. The need to get products designed quickly has put further pressure on the design engineer. This pressure is aggravated when many system power needs are not considered until late in the design cycle. An ASIC power designer, for example, may develop the power solution

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Digital Power Helps Get Products to Market More Quickly

2010 CUI Inc

before getting the silicon back. In most case they will have to modify the power supply because the final silicon may be different than initially simulated. This could have a 2 to 4 month affect on the schedule. Introduction timing of a new product has been shown to correlate directly to long term market share and profitability. Such delays, therefore, can have a significant impact on the business viability of the end product in potentially missed market windows. The Importance of Digital Power For medium and complex designs, digital solutions provide value in terms of easy integration and system monitoring capabilities. They allow for easy access in configuring the initial design as well as virtually immediate ability to reconfigure parameters. The hardwired analog solutions that have been traditionally used can now be replaced by a more flexible digital one. This flexibility is available through a software Graphic User Interface (GUI) that allows the solutions to be individually programmed instead of physically changing components. The time consuming tuning aspects of a changing design can therefore be handled very simply through the GUI. The ability to quickly design in a product directly correlates to the usability of the software GUI. A quick learning curve allows the engineer to spend less time trying to understand the software and more time working his design. The GUI is therefore an important tool which needs to work seamlessly with the hardware. Digital modules can be easily programmed to define specific sequencing delays to coordinate the required start-up and shut down needs of the particular chip. This consistent and predictable configuration ensures that catastrophic and unpredictable current flows do not occur through the loads or high performance components. In a typical intermediate bus architecture, an isolated DC-DC converter will convert 48V DC down to a 12V DC bus rail. From this one rail, non-isolated digital DC-DC POLs can be used to generate a variety of different output voltages. The ability to program the output voltages to meet the ever growing needs of todays ICs is an important feature of the digital DC-DC POL. Digital solutions also have the capability of monitoring various system parameters to better optimize total system efficiency on a real time basis. Monitoring and reporting of input voltage, output voltage, output current, and temperature provide data that can be utilized to make possible real-time adjustments at the system level. These optimizations were previously not feasible with analog alternatives. Standard Infrastructure Wide spread market acceptance is driven by many factors. In order to move beyond just early adopters, the digital solution must not only solve problems, they must be easy to use in concept and practice. One aspect of this utility comes in the ability to interact with multiple different devices. Components need to easily communicate amongst one another. Electrical and software compatibility ensure a more seamless integration of a total solution. The Power Management Bus (PMBus) is an open standard power-management protocol with a fully defined command language that facilitates communication with power converters and other devices in a power system. The protocol is implemented over the industry-standard SMBus serial interface. This flexible and versatile standard allows for communication between devices based on both analog and digital technologies, and

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Digital Power Helps Get Products to Market More Quickly

2010 CUI Inc

provides true interoperability which will reduce design complexity and shorten time to market for power system designers. Novum Digital Power Modules V-Infinitys new Novum product line is an example of a digital module that meets the needs of todays design engineer. The series offers full featured non-isolated digital DC-DC POL modules incorporating the key parameters being sought after in digital solutions. The easy-to-use modules have programmable outputs and have the capability to perform a wide variety of power management and monitoring functions. In addition, through the use of Powervations Auto-control technology, the modules have the ability to autocompensate and handle different load variations. Automatic compensation is achieved through Powervations Autocontrol technology. The patented technology allows the module to automatically compensate for component aging, tolerance and temperature variations. These adjustments optimize the system for higher performance control, significantly improving transient performance and intelligently managing multiple power rails. Because of the ability to sense component variations, lower cost, wider tolerance components can be used without risking stability. The technology also allows for fewer decoupling capacitors further reducing system board space and cost. Finally, the unique industry leading approach frees the engineer from the complex burden of loop compensation expediting the end product time to market.

Digital solutions can help solve the issues facing todays design engineer. Digital power management addresses system level efficiency and does so while bringing products to market more quickly. The technology also provides enhanced communication and the ability to monitor, control, and configure minimizing system power and energy consumption. As companies look for new ways of gaining a competitive edge, digital power will be an avenue that many will increasingly choose to consider.

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Digital Power Helps Get Products to Market More Quickly

2010 CUI Inc