Understand your power system

Ease of use is paramount in these applications and high integration in the regulator will provide that ease of use. Features that simplify these power designs include internal MOSFETs, internal compensation, digital programmability and even internal inductors.

Infrastructure equipment use FPGAs, DSPs, ASICs, and peripherals that are powered by numerous point-of-load regulators which are, in turn, controlled by a master controller. The PMBus protocol or I2C/SPI-based control with a microcontroller is often used in these applications. Some applications require you to control both the power of the FPGAs on the board and several other devices in a system with dynamic power management and monitoring. Sometimes it is suggested that you turn on/off some ICs based on trigger events. These are situations for advanced system power-management ICs like the MAX34440 and MAX34441 which control multiple POL regulators and fans. These devices enable dynamic power regulation with multiple operating modes including hibernate and standby, and provide superior monitoring and fault logging.

Applications that run on batteries can take advantage of the Xilinx FPGAs’ power-saving modes which keep the FPGA circuits in hibernate modes except when crunching algorithms. Regulators like the MAX15053 can power these FPGAs, and can also save energy and improve efficiency with techniques such as pulse-skipping and light-load-operation mode and control.

If this abstract has piqued your interest, read the full article online in the August issue of Electronic Specifier Design, by clicking here.