Ericsson ‘Digital Power Compendium’ Hits Four-Figure Download Total

The Compendium comprises more than 450 pages and includes Ericsson’s key technical papers on digital power and detailed specifications of the company’s comprehensive and industry-leading range of advanced bus converter and point-of-load DC/DC conversion products. Document will help power architects and students to develop the next generation of energy-efficient systems

Mohan Mankikar at Micro-Tech Consultants commented in the May issue of the Power Electronics Industry News: “When Ericsson publishes an article, a book or a compendium on the subject of DC-DC converters, it needs a serious attention from the power electronics/supply community. About 16 years ago, Ericsson released The POWERBOOK: ‘A designer’s guide to distributed power architectures using DC/DC power modules’, which provided a comprehensive description and analysis of the distributed power, a ‘hot topic’ at that time. The POWERBOOK was also well received by the power supply community. Digital power is also a hot topic of the day and hence Ericsson’s Compendium has gained significant attention.”

“This early success of the Digital Power Compendium has been really exceptional,” said Patrick Le Fèvre, Marketing and Communication Director of Ericsson Power Modules. “The Compendium is first of its kind in the power industry and represents the very best of Ericsson’s R&D activities in the digital power field. We have high hopes that it will both energize and aid engineers and power system architects to find new ways to reduce board energy consumption.”

Ericsson took on the digital power challenge and began its research into its possibilities in the early part of the last decade. It presented the first fruits of its R&D at the Darnell Power Forum in 2006 and in 2008 launched the BMR453, the industry’s first fully digitally controlled and PMBus-compliant DC/DC converter. Since then digital power has progressed from being an embryonic technology with enormous potential for the ‘early adopter’ to becoming the reference power technology in new ICT equipment for the ‘early majority’.

At the beginning of this year, Ericsson unveiled its new FRIDA II second digital-power Advanced Bus Converter platform, which integrates an unprecedented number of technical innovations and industry firsts to make a significant contribution in further reducing energy consumption. Delivering lower power dissipation in end-customer systems – decreasing the requirement for hard cooling – the new platform will also bring higher reliability, lower CO2 emissions and lower Total Cost Of Ownership.

The first product based on the FRIDA II platform will be a quarter-brick advanced bus converter, called the BMR456, which is shortly to be released and will deliver an output power of 400W and above; followed by a new eighth-brick format device, the BMR457, which will deliver an output power of 250W and above. The BMR456 will implement the advanced FRIDA II firmware, which is an ‘Energy Performance Optimizer’ that continually optimizes switching parameters to reduce energy consumption to an absolute minimum.

The FRIDA II platform is part of the Ericsson 3E products and patents portfolio. Through close cooperation with board and systems designers, the company was the first to release a 21st century power architecture that can be fully integrated into the rest of the digital chain of processors and associated components.