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