Broadcom Ships Advanced Power Management Unit for New Mobile Handsets from Samsung
Broadcom Corp. announced that its power management unit (PMU) system- on-a-chip (SoC) is now shipping in volume production: Samsung Electronics has adopted the Broadcom® BCM59001 PMU SoC for use in its new SGH-J750 mobile phone, which has begun shipping in volume. The SoC integration in the BCM59001 PMU is said to deliver both optimized system-level power consumption and lower overall system cost in mobile handsets.
Broadcom announced its entry into the PMU market in November 2006 to provide advanced power solutions as a strategic enabler to its broad range of SoC platforms including cellular, mobile multimedia, VoIP and security processors. Modern cellular handsets and other mobile devices require highly efficient and integrated PMU devices as companions to baseband and other processors to ensure optimal system operation and battery life.
The evolution of cellular networks to 2.5G and 3G technologies has enabled increasingly sophisticated functionality and applications such as GPS and advanced multimedia in new mobile handsets and other portable connected devices. These power-hungry features (previously available in high-end products only) are proliferating down in greater numbers to mainstream products, creating a larger pool of devices in need of advanced power management functionality. The Broadcom BCM59001 is claimed to address this challenge with an advanced power management solution that reduces total system cost and is flexible and scalable enough to manage the most demanding power requirements. The BCM59001 PMU is said to provide dc-dc power supplies with very high efficiency over a wide range of loads, a smaller footprint and fewer external components than competing solutions, enabling longer battery life and lower overall system cost and size.
The BCM59001 PMU is offered with a complete set of software and device drivers to enable a high level of programming flexibility and a complete system solution. The software includes programmability for the device’s integrated linear and switching regulator output voltages, enabling fast and efficient correlation between the power source and multiple integrated components. The BCM59001 also provides a flexible programming architecture to customize all of the default settings and start-up sequencing of the device’s linear and switching regulators.
