Analog Devices Introduces New Family of PWM Controllers
Analog Devices, Inc. has extended its portfolio of power management ICs with a power controller designed to improve system stability and reliability, while reducing board space and cost in notebook computers, desktop computers, servers and gaming consoles. The ADP3192 combines ADI's proprietary enhanced pulse-width modulation (EPWM™) and Flex-mode™ architectures to reduce the number of capacitors required, allowing designers to reduce typical board space by as much as 30 percent, and lowering motherboard cost by as much as 15 percent.
"As the processing demands in computers and gaming consoles increase, CPUs require accompanying solutions that can respond quickly and efficiently to shifting power needs," said John Blake, product line manager, Power Management, Analog Devices. "We have answered these challenges by taking an industry standard architecture--pulse-width-modulation--and enhancing it with a series of features and functions that stretch its performance limits. The result is the ADP3192, our first in a family of controllers to perform critical functions faster and more reliably, and at a fraction of the cost of existing patchwork solutions."
Analog Devices' EPWM development enhances the standard pwm architecture by increasing loop gain to improve transient response times when load step occurs. Furthermore, this enhanced architecture maintains accurate phase balance in all dynamic mode conditions. EPWM is an ADI patent-pending architecture. Flex-mode, a patented technology, is a multi-mode control loop architecture designed to proportionally convert voltages across multiple inductors.
The ADP3192 is optimized for converting the 12V main supply into the core output voltages (between 0.5V and 1.6V) required by high-performance processors. In doing so, it reads an 8-bit voltage identification (VID) code directly from the processor. The phase relationship of the output signals can be programmed to provide 2-, 3- or 4-phase operation, allowing for the construction of up to four complementary buck-switching stages. The ADP3192 also provides short-circuit protection and adjustable current limiting.
The ADP3192 is sampling now with full production scheduled for May 2006. The device is priced at $1.30 per unit in 1,000-piece quantities in a 40-pin LFCSP (lead frame chip scale package) and is specified over an operating temperature range of 0 °C to + 85 °C.
