News

CUI’s Novum Power Modules use Powervation Digital Controllers

October 01, 2012 by Jeff Shepard

Powervation Ltd. announced that power supply and power module maker CUI Inc. has selected its PV3012 next-generation digital controller in two newly-released power product families, the NDM2P series and the NSM2P series. Both product families are point-of-load (POL) dc-dc converters.

The new NDM2P-series PMBus-compliant POL converters are the latest additions to the company's Novum Advanced Power product line. Also new is the Novum NSM2P-series, the industry's first self-compensating no-bus digital POL DC/DC module family, which targets customers who need the flexibility and configurability of digital power, as well as low component count and high reliability, but who do not wish to include digital bus communications in their systems.

Both power module product families deliver intelligent adaptive self-compensation through the use of Powervation's Auto-Control® technology. Automatically and dynamically balancing the trade-off between performance and system stability in real time, Auto-Control compensates for changes in the converter's output impedance (e.g., component aging, manufacturing variances, and temperature) and wide variety of potential loads.

In addition to providing the company's patented adaptive loop compensation technology, the PV3012's differential measurement and high resolution ADC, enables precision measurement and precision control of outputs. PV3012 provides 0.5% set-point voltage regulation over the module's wide input range of 4.5 V ~ 14 V, and output current measurement down to 3% accuracy over a wide range of load currents. The converter's output can be configured and controlled through pre-stored configurations, single resistor pin strapping, or via PMBus commands. When used in dual phase mode, phases may be added or removed as the load varies, so that efficiency is maximized over the load range. Additionally, the outputs of the phases are interleaved so that the effective switching frequency at the output is doubled. With Powervation's Digital Stress Share (DSS) and PLL synchronization, multiple PV3012 devices may be used in parallel to increase the number of phases supporting the application's load.

Comments Mark Adams, Senior Vice President, CUI Inc.: "The configurability and flexibility of the PV3012 and its outstanding transient response, allows our modules the performance and features demanded by our customer base. The NDM2P modules are our highest performing modules in these key areas."

Adds Powervation's CEO, Mike McAuliffe: "CUI's innovative new power modules perfectly utilizes our adaptive digital controllers to maximize performance regardless of load or operating conditions. We are pleased to have worked closely with CUI on developing these new modules and are sure that customers will appreciate the significant performance benefits that they offer."