In all electronic devices and products, there is no lack of power management IC. With the rapid development of digital high-speed IC technology and chip manufacturing technology, the role of high-performance power IC in helping out is becoming more and more important. The ever-changing application of electronic products and the rising demand of environmental protection and energy saving also put forward higher requirements for power IC, which gave birth to the demand of a new generation of power management IC with high integration, high performance and high energy efficiency, and also became the eternal mission of power management IC manufacturers.
The power IC needs to "raise its posture"
According to iSuppli, a market adjustment agency, the power management IC market is expected to reach 38.7 billion US dollars in 2016, with consumer electronics, network communication and mobile internet as the main application markets, and automotive electronics and new energy fields are gradually exerting strength. Under the action of application drive and technological progress, the technical requirements for power IC are also rising. Moreover, with the continuous innovation of applications, the market of power IC also presents diversified demands and subdivided applications, and the market demand of more high-performance power ics is deepening and expanding, so as to better serve the system innovation and performance improvement.
On the one hand, with the continuous upgrading of semiconductor technology, chips and components on PCB board have higher functions, faster operation speed and smaller size, which drives power management IC to provide lower and more accurate nuclear power voltage and larger power supply current, stricter voltage feedback accuracy and higher efficiency performance. On the other hand, the application field of power management IC continues to expand and deepen, and it is indispensable to achieve better control functions, smarter control loops, faster dynamic response characteristics, and more simplified peripheral layout design. If the power management IC wants to "get it", it needs to face these problems directly.
Mark Davidson, Marketing Director of Altera Power Business Department, said that in order to help customers solve these challenges and simplify design, digital, modular and intelligent power supply IC has become an inevitable trend.
For example, he said that for FPGA customers, power management has increasingly become a strategic competitive advantage, especially in the fields of communication, computing and industrial applications. With the continuous development of FPGA and SoC, designers have added a large number of mixed-signal functions in the next generation embedded system, achieving system-level performance that was previously unattainable. How to supply power to FPGA with more and more functions, higher performance and more advanced technology is indeed a very challenging problem. For example, FPGA with 14nm process will have higher performance, and correspondingly, higher performance power supply will be needed to match it. Moreover, the 14nm FPGA has more stringent requirements on power supply and higher requirements on power supply accuracy. If the voltage range exceeds the specification requirements, the FPGA may fail or even burn out.
Deep analysis of three major trends of power management IC
Deep analysis of three major trends of power management IC
This also means that designers must find the best combination between strict FPGA power rail requirements, system power consumption and cooling budget constraints, build robust and reliable systems, meet budget requirements and finish their projects on time, and fully meet the functional and performance requirements of their circuit boards and systems, which is not easy.
Digital power supply stimulates vitality
In order to cope with this market trend, all major power management IC manufacturers are paying close attention to deploying troops, and digital power supply has become their "trick" to spare no effort. With the great advantages of flexibility, quick response, high integration and high controllability, digital power supply has shown a strong development momentum.
According to the report of IMS Research of IHS, it is estimated that the global digital power market revenue will increase to 12.4 billion US dollars in 2017, and the digital power IC market will reach 2.6 billion US dollars. The digital power market is dominated by the application of servers and communication equipment, while expanding to other more application fields, such as single spark can start a prairie fire.
POL converters generally provide voltage for low-voltage and high-current digital loads (such as FPGA, microprocessor, DSP and other digital circuits with extremely high dynamic characteristics). It is becoming more and more difficult to adjust the voltage accurately at about 1V, and to meet the load transient requirements of nearly 200A/ns by using pure analog control technology. Some digital controllers can provide functions such as nonlinear control which are difficult to realize in similar analog IC. In fact, almost all POL digital controllers contain some different control technologies aimed at improving transient response. These special control algorithms constitute the threshold for traditional analog power companies to enter digital power development. If the power supply adopts digital core to realize the control loop internally, it can meet the extremely strict transient requirements, achieve extremely low ripple voltage, and achieve extremely high precision voltage stabilization within the output voltage range. At the same time, it can support PMbus communication interface, and can realize remote and accurate current, voltage and temperature monitoring.
Digital power supplies inject new vitality into the field of power supply design, and at the same time put forward higher requirements for power management IC manufacturers. It is understood that on the one hand, power management IC manufacturers should not only provide a series of integrated design solutions, but also provide a full range of high, medium and low-end products; Secondly, they also need a complete set of digital power development tools, including hardware and graphical interface (GUI); Finally, a complete solution can be created by obtaining related peripheral components such as Power Train. On the other hand, if the digital power IC manufacturers "go it alone" again, they are obviously "incapable". Zhang Weichao, senior business manager of Altera's Inspiration power products in China, mentioned that the technologies of main chip manufacturers such as FPGA/ASSP/ASIC are changing with each passing day, while the performance is constantly improving, the requirements for power supply are also extremely strict, and the power management IC manufacturers can no longer fight alone as before, but must cooperate with digital chip manufacturers. Power IC manufacturers need to communicate effectively with the main chip manufacturers, because only by understanding the requirements of system chips can the target design specifications of power IC become more meaningful, and this power design customized for system performance requirements can ultimately make a great contribution to system power consumption optimization. This kind of cooperation can help power management IC manufacturers' products become more competitive and gain more market share.
Market mergers and acquisitions in recent years undoubtedly prove this trend. Qualcomm acquired Summit, Mediatek acquired Richtek, Microchip acquired Micrel, Altera acquired Inspiration, and recently acquired the digital power controller department of ZMDI, a German innovative chip company. In fact, the reasons come down in one continuous line, and similar strategies are recognized and implemented by the industry. The advantage of acquiring a power supply enterprise is far more "direct" than that of cooperating with a power supply enterprise. Mark Davidson said that the power devices of general large power management IC manufacturers will have many different application fields, and they will not and cannot put all their energy into the field of FPGA, while Altera will pay more attention to the application of power devices in FPGA through acquisition. He emphasized that after acquiring Inspiration, we can gather experts in power supply, FPGA system engineering and circuit board layout to jointly develop a better solution.
Modularization trend highlights
Influenced by the SoC design trend, the power management IC technology has shown an increasingly strong modular trend in recent years. On the one hand, equipment is becoming more and more complex, and processors with more functional features, faster and more complex need more advanced power management solutions. Power management technology needs to integrate more functions on smaller silicon chips and achieve stronger system power performance with higher design flexibility, which is changing the traditional power design method. On the other hand, modular power management IC can effectively reduce the complexity of system design, save circuit board space, improve the long-term reliability of the system, and also effectively reduce the system cost, which brings obvious benefits.
Therefore, modular power management IC in the market began to surface constantly. Altera recently added a 30 MP power SOC DC-DC buck converter EM1130 to its Inspiration power supply solution. This product, regarded as a milestone by Altera, is the first product in a series of integrated digital DC-DC buck converters, which can provide power management functions for Altera's 10th generation FPGA. EM1130 is "powerful", with the highest pin layout density in the industry and less than half of other solutions. It can not only provide strict high output voltage stabilization and fast instantaneous response functions, but also remotely measure key parameters such as current, voltage and temperature.
Zhang Weichao said that the biggest advantage of the integrated Enpirion power single-chip system is that it greatly improves the reliability and ease of use of the system, while the module power supply is small in size, low in EMI and faster in load transient response and lower in noise through the digital control loop, so that it can more intelligently adapt to the latest requirements of platform manufacturers for reducing system power consumption and improving the severe challenges of performance. By combining the proven Enpirion power SoC solution with Altera's FPGA, customers can complete their design on the smallest possible circuit board, while maximizing performance and reducing power consumption, speeding up product launch, reducing material costs and enhancing system reliability.
In addition, the modularization trend of power management IC is also reflected in the integration with other chips on the board, and the integration of communication and monitoring functions between power management IC and main control chip is also increasing in the market. Zhang Weichao mentioned that in the future, Altera will integrate some power modules into FPGA by using the power supply technology of Inspiration Company, which will make the circuit board of the system simpler, optimize the power consumption and cost, and simplify the development of FPGA system.
Intelligentization improves intelligence
The intelligentization of power management IC is also due to the general trend, or it can actively "cooperate" with the ever-increasing demand for the functions of the platform main chip. Zhang Weichao said that with the increasing complexity of system functions, the requirements for energy consumption are getting higher and higher, and customers' requirements for perception and control of power supply running status are getting higher and higher. Power supply designers are no longer satisfied with real-time monitoring of current, voltage and temperature, but also put forward the requirements of diagnosing power supply and flexibly setting each output voltage parameter. In addition, the power management IC must be effectively connected with the equipment that needs power supply on the circuit board. Because the system requires more real-time cooperation and cooperation between the power subsystem and the main system, and even supports monitoring and management through the cloud, intelligent management and regulation have become necessary.
How to realize intelligence? Zhang Weichao said that this requires efforts in two aspects. First, the power management IC should communicate with the kernel, and all parts can communicate with each other. Timely dynamic control and seamless communication can make an intelligent power management system, which can detect, analyze and respond to the changing power supply demand of the system in real time, thus greatly improving the efficiency of the system. Second, the internal parameters can be adjusted online, which means that the dynamic characteristics of the power supply are variable, which can adapt to the change of load in a large range while ensuring certain performance. Digital power supply plays an important role in this respect, and it is necessary to continuously achieve breakthroughs in control algorithms and self-adaptation.
Altera has made new progress in this area through continuous innovation. Not long ago, Altera held Altera Technology Day 2015 in 14 cities in the Asia-Pacific region, showing the latest FPGA, SoC and Inspiration power solutions. Among them, Arria 10 and Enpirion's digital PowerSoC are combined to realize the intelligent FPGA power supply system and the lowest power consumption. Its specific characteristics include the following aspects:
1. All power supply requirements of FPGA design will lead to the establishment of FPGA power tree, and different power-on sequences are required for different resources, which puts forward higher requirements for power converters. The inspiration device has a "Power OK" or "Power Good" pin, which supports grouping and sorting of power rails of different resources in FPGA, and sends a signal to the system controller or sorting device, and a certain FPGA input has been powered on, so the next sorting step can be started;
2. Another common requirement of system power supply is to be able to carry out remote monitoring, real-time monitoring, fault alarm and corresponding adjustment of power supply parameters. The simplest, cheapest and most compact way is to use the power regulator which integrates the remote monitoring function and the corresponding communication bus. With the smart voltage ID(SmartVID) feature, Altera's Arria 10 FPGA and SoC can determine the VCC voltage and communication with the inspiration voltage regulator system through the PMBus interface, and dynamically adjust the core voltage rail to the minimum without sacrificing the system performance. At the same time, ED8101P0xQI single-phase digital controller supporting inspiration of PMBus can be paired with ET4040QI high-current power supply, which can realize various remote monitoring and low power consumption characteristics of FPGA.
There are some common requirements for FPGA power supply design. Understanding how FPGA design and application affect power consumption and power supply requirements will make the design clearer and more successful. Altera's Inspiration power solution design meets these demanding FPGA power requirements. In the future, the functions of electronic systems will become increasingly complex, diverse and intelligent, and the requirements for power management systems will become higher and higher. Only by deeply understanding the characteristics and power supply requirements of each system and conforming to the development trend of digitalization, modularization and intelligence can we provide tailor-made "perfect" power supply guarantee for the system.
