Summit’s Programmable Environmental Monitor Provides Real-time Power Information and Enables Green System Designs

Summit's Programmable Environmental Monitor Provides Real-time Power Information and Enables Green System Designs

Summit Microelectronics has announced the new SMM151/2/3 product family of environmental monitoring products. The devices provide complete digital power supply monitoring and control functions, utilizing I2C for communication. Their ability to measure system input current eliminates the efficiency and accuracy issues associated with monitoring output current. The monitoring semiconductors are ideal for high-reliability environments requiring real-time power intelligence, high-accuracy monitoring and system protection to ensure high performance and zero downtime. Typical applications are in computing, data communications, and telecommunications,

Summit’s new environmental monitors allow input current and differential output voltage monitoring via integrated, high-accuracy, 10-bit A/D conversion. This allows systems to obtain real-time power information and adjust operating modes for achieving maximum efficiency. Unlike other solutions that monitor output current, the SMM151/2/3 measure input current. This eliminates the side effects of the output sense resistor adding directly to the output impedance of the supply and resulting in higher voltage drops.

To speed user product development, Summit offers customers the SMM151EV companion evaluation board and a graphical user interface (GUI) software so designers can quickly see the features and benefits and design a prototype, digital power supply controller/monitor solution with the SMM151/2/3 family. This is a complete development tool that lets designers easily manipulate the characteristics of their systems. The SMM151EV design kit includes menu-driven Microsoft Windows (R) GUI software to automate programming tasks and also includes all necessary hardware to interface to the USB port of a laptop or PC.

Once a user completes design and prototyping, the SMM151EV automatically generates a HEX data file that can be transmitted to Summit for review and approval. This ensures that the device will operate properly in the end application. The design kit software can be downloaded today from Summit’s website (www.summitmicro.com).