New Industry Products

Summit Microelectronics Debuts SMB111/SMB112 PPM ICs

March 28, 2005 by Jeff Shepard

Summit Microelectronics Inc. (San Jose, CA), a supplier of programmable, mixed-signal, power management platform solutions, announced two new devices, the SMB111 and SMB112, which are part of the Programmable Power Manager (PPM) integrated circuit (IC) family. The SMB111 and SMB112 deliver flexibility and ease of implementation to system design engineers, who can digitally program the entire multiple output power supply and associated power management functions with a few clicks of a mouse.

The SMB111 and SMB112 integrate precise power delivery and power control in a single device. In addition to simplifying the power supply design, Summit's configurable technology creates a "power system platform" that allows a significant degree of hardware re-use. The SMB111 four-channel and SMB112 five-channel PPM ICs are optimized for complex consumer electronics applications such as LCD/TFT TVs/monitors, digital cameras/camcorders, DVD/MP3 portable media players/recorders, global positioning receivers, personal digital assistants, digital set-top boxes and digital video recorders as well as 3G "smart" mobile phones.

The SMB111 comprises four channels of power conversion: three pulse-width modulated (PWM) dc-dc step-down (buck) converters, and one PWM dc-dc step-up (boost) converter. The SMB112 offers five channels: two PWM dc-dc step-up (boost) converters, one PWM dc-dc step-down (buck) converter, one PWM dc-dc inverting step-up/down (buck/boost) converter, and one low-dropout linear regulator. The PWM channels on both devices are digitally programmable for output characteristics and monitoring, including voltage output levels to ±0.5% accuracy. The SMB111 and SMB112 operate directly from +2.7 V to +6.0 V input, making it suited for one-cell, lithium-ion battery applications. Higher input voltages (two-cell lithium-ion or +12 V) can be accommodated. The operating temperature range is from +0 °C to +70 °C, and packaging is the 5 mm x 5 mm, 32-pad QFN-32 that is lead-free and RoHS-standard compliant.

Complementing the power regulation is a suite of power control features, including static or dynamic output-voltage programming and margining, independent channel sequencing/enable, and output slew rate control. The devices provide complete power system diagnostics, including input and output monitoring for under-/over-voltage, low/missing battery detection, ac adapter detection and RESET/HEALTHY output. Programming is achieved via the convenient I2C bus and configuration data is safely stored in non-volatile EEPROM memory of which 96 bytes are available for user data storage. The devices can be programmed during development and then used in a "fixed" configuration or they may be re-programmed in-system via the I2C interface.

Available now in production quantities, the SMB111 and SMB112 are both priced at $2.60 each in quantities of 1,000 units.