powerZONE Products for the week of November 29, 2004
Summit Microelectronics Says . . .
SMB120: Programmable Power Management IC For Portable
Consumer Products
Digital cameras/camcorders, DVDs, GPS and MP3 players first
products to benefit
Summit Microelectronics has announced a new concept in power supply design that gives system design engineers unparalleled flexibility and ease of implementation. Using the new Summit SMB120, designers can now digitally program the entire multiple output power supply and associated power management functions with a few clicks of a mouse compared to the tedious iterative hardware design of conventional analog power solutions.
The SMB120 nine-channel programmable DC-DC converter is the first in a family of new devices optimized for increasingly complex consumer electronics applications such as digital still cameras/camcorders (DSC/DCC), DVD/MP3 players/recorders, handheld and automotive GPS terminals, personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable LCD TVs, as well as the next generation of "smart" mobile phones.
"The SMB120 is Summit's first device in a series of increasingly integrated configurable precision power products for the consumer electronics market and, as such, sets a new direction for the company," stated Chuck Berghoff, Summit president and CEO. "Consumer electronics OEMs are under intense pressures to release more products to market with shorter development cycles than ever before. Summit's proven programmable analog technology creates a 'platform' solution that allows OEM's to develop designs dramatically faster and with fewer engineering resources than with conventional offerings. Our new consumer products leverage Summit's programmable precision control technology, supplied for years to the world's leading communication market equipment OEMs. They integrate power conversion functions to a level not seen before. Initial customer adoption is exceeding expectations."
Incorporating a level of programmability, integration and precision previously missing in power management integrated circuits, the SMB120 utilizes the I2C bus as a management bus, providing a digital, simple-to-use GUI software-driven programming interface. Capability includes the ability to independently sequence on/off each output with precisely controlled timing and slew rate and program or adjust "on-the-fly" (margining) output voltages to +/-0.5% accuracy. Additionally, complete power system diagnostics and monitoring is provided via the digital interface. These include input and output monitoring for under/over-voltage (UV/OV), low/missing battery detection, AC adapter detection and RESET output. All configuration data for the SMB120 is stored in on-chip EEPROM memory of which 96 bytes are available for user data storage. Enhancing flexibility ever further, the device can be programmed during development and then used in a "fixed" configuration or it may be re-programmed in-system via the I2C interface.
The SMB120 incorporates a total of nine-channels of power conversion:
four pulse-width modulated (PWM) DC-DC step-down (buck) converters, three
PWM DC-DC step-up (boost) converters, one PWM DC-DC inverting step-up/down
(buck/boost) converter, and one low-dropout linear LDO regulator. All PWM
channels are digitally programmable for output characteristics and monitoring,
including voltage output levels to +/- 0.5% precision.
analogZONE Says...
The staff at analogZONE have seen the birth of many new companies, and have seen a good proportion of them also wither and die. Others we watch building up a portfolio that is clearly to sell themselves rather than to become a real supplier. In the death arena, the pattern we see is surprisingly similar. Often, while tracking these companies, you reach a point at which you stop breathing, realizing they are at the point of no return -- either they will go forward, or they will fail. It is perhaps more obvious to us than it is to investors because we get to see the real company at work.
In that vein I had been getting really worried about Summit. The company's extremely clever power management technology won a well-deserved analogZONE Product of the Year Award in 2003 for the SMM665 programmable six-channel controller. Noticeably, Summit was the only private company to win an award in 2003. Other vendors have been heard to dismiss the company as irrelevant and my fear was that they would not be able to jump out of the box they were in, to find the volume market they needed.
They have jumped out, and brilliantly… There should now be no stopping Summit from becoming a powerhouse in the consumer portable power market, and anybody who hasn't taken notice at this point needs to pull his or her head out of the sand.
The SMB120 is the first of what has to be a long line of products to power consumer electronics running from a single-cell Li-Ion battery (2-cell solutions can also be configured) where the voltages needed for different sections of the product have to be individually tailored to increase overall battery life. We have seen the importance of margining in other arenas but this is now a major influence in consumer products as well. In the design cycle of all products the exact power requrements are rarely known until the remainder of the design is complete; then there is an almighty rush to get the power supply designed. Because of the general lack of power supply design expertise in-house, it used to be that a field applications engineer from a large vendor would come in for a couple of days and design a custom solution. But that doesn't work any more because of real estate considerations in portable products. The alternativee - ASICs - is time-consuming. An off-the-shelf programmable solution is the ideal. And, here it is.
The first product provides nine channels of power, using Summit's already proven programmable technology, which we don't need to redescribe here, with Summit approving a hex file produced by the customer, using very intuitive software. In that way the delivered product meets the specifications set by the customer. The nine channels consist of four synchronous buck channels, three boost channels, one buck-boost channel, plus one fixed 3.3-V LDO output. The example on the front page of the data sheet shows the product driving a digital camera (with audio), but there will be many other products needing more channels or, in most cases, fewer. Each of the programmable channels can have a unique sequence position with power-off sequencing in exactly the opposite order, and full monitoring is provided for over- andunder-voltages (programmable to 5%, 10%, 15% or 20% of nominal). All the channels can also be programmed for soft-start without the use of an external capacitor. Resistive dividers (external for the boost channels) set the output voltage, with the actual reference voltage also programmable.
The PWM frequency is a nominal 800 kHz allowing for small, but realizable, inductors. The outputs have a better than 0.5% accuracy and there are 96 bytes of user-configurable NVM in the EEPROM for general-purpose use, such as revision history, etc. The remainder of the on-chip EEPROM is used for the user-programmed settings. Communications are over an I2C bus.
We're breathing again, with Summit heading for an extremely successful future. They will win sockets in consumer products that vendors want to get to market in the fastest possible time frame. Most of those sales will be in the hundreds of thousands, but you don't need many of those design wins before you are talking of revenue in millions. With a few other versions already in the design cycle the company is also looking to put MSOFET drivers on chip, perhaps up to 500 mA for a couple of channels, which will make the products even more attractive to designers; and for which Summit will be able to extract a premium.
The SMB range will find homes in products ranging from LCD TVs to fishfinders, and automotive DVD players to GPS.
The SMB120 is in production in Pb-free/RoHS-compliant QFN-64 and is priced at $5.95 in 1000-piece lots.
Data Sheet on request from the company. Tel: +1 (408) 436-9890