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

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

Real-time output voltage and input current monitoring allows for sophisticated power control, while output voltage margining maximizes system reliability.

SAN JOSE, CALIF. – AUGUST 19, 2008 – 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 unique 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.

“Real-time power monitoring enables “green” system operation and addresses the electronics industry’s efforts to minimize power losses in high-power systems,” stated George Paparrizos, Summit marketing director. “At the same time, high-performance systems implement voltage margining to ensure maximum run-time under all conditions. Summit’s new environmental monitors address both requirements while maintaining low system cost. The unparalleled integration of the SMM151/2/3 family and its ability to enable digital power control allows for high system performance and improved system reliability.”

Features

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. Given the low duty-cycle operation in most modern high-reliability systems, input current measurement provides good accuracy while eliminating efficiency losses of output current sensing.

The SMM151 and SMM152 devices provide output voltage margining with a range of 0.3V to VDD (up to 5V) or a wider range via an external resistor divider. The high-accuracy (1% or better) control of the output voltage ensures signal integrity of digital chips, even when low-accuracy DC/DC converters are utilized. Furthermore, margining during development or production enables worst-case testing of power supply tolerance combinations, thereby increasing overall system reliability for maximum product quality and minimum field failure rates (and associated costs). The SMM151 and SMM152 allow margining control via I2C commands or two dedicated pins.

All devices offer two general-purpose voltage comparators that can be used for detecting under- and over-voltage conditions. Furthermore, the SMM152 and SMM153 also integrate four general-purpose inputs/outputs, whose power-on state is determined by non-volatile memory settings. Two logic outputs are also available for notifying the system of error conditions and of margining status.