Power management is meticulous and the Asia-Pacific Power Technology Forum is brilliantly presented

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Power management is meticulous and the Asia-Pacific Power Technology Forum is brilliantly presented [Copy link]

Portable products integrate more and more functions, such as video, audio, photography, and video recording. The integration of these functions also puts higher requirements on power chips. How to achieve increasingly complex power management needs in a shorter time and smaller space with lower power consumption and cost is an urgent problem that power designers need to solve. At the same time, as the world faces an increasingly severe energy crisis, the development of energy-saving and environmentally friendly green power products is gradually being put on the agenda.

Following the successful hosting of the Asia-Pacific Power Technology Forum Summit by our magazine for two consecutive years, the 2006 Asia-Pacific Power Technology Forum Summit also came to a successful conclusion in Shenzhen a few days ago. On April 12, more than 300 experts, designers and audiences from the industry gathered together to discuss power management technology and future technology development trends.

The forum invited experts from seven manufacturers including Texas Instruments (TI), Fairchild Semiconductor, Chongxin Microelectronics, Renesas, Richtek, Analog Devices (ADI), and BCD to give wonderful speeches and have in-depth discussions with the audience on issues such as power management and portable product power design.

The following is an excerpt of the highlights of the manufacturer's speech to share with readers.

TI: Power management enters the market segment

With the rapid development of consumer electronic products such as mobile phones, MP3, PDA, digital cameras, and notebook computers, as well as the continuous increase in functions, new requirements and more severe challenges have been put forward for traditional battery life and power management technology, and the portable power management product market has gradually been segmented. Zhang Hongwei, manager of the high-performance analog device division of Texas Instruments, pointed out that in order to meet the growing requirements of consumer electronic products for power management chips, power management products are facing the following innovations:

◆ Extend battery life

◆ Reduce product size

◆ Reduce product costs

◆ Support new applications

TI has launched a series of comprehensive and advanced power management products with its profound expertise in high-performance analog systems and strong manufacturing capabilities . In the discrete power management solution, TI has launched TPS65120, TPS65110, TPS62400, TPS63000, TPS61058/59, TPS65552A, Bq26150 and other products for LCD display, white light LED, DC/DC converter and battery applications. Among them, Bq26150 is the first battery smart authentication IC in TI's battery pack safety product family. It can obtain important safety data information based on the cyclic redundancy check (CRC) architecture, and can combine unique identification with random questions to generate transmission results, and verify the battery packs used in mobile phones, PDAs, digital cameras, laptops or other portable applications. At the same time, it can also easily identify batteries with potential unsafe factors that are used in their products without the approval of consumer electronics manufacturers.

In terms of integrated power management products, TI also provides a series of solutions for digital cameras, MP3, PMP, PDA, smart phones, notebook computers and other application areas. Products include TPS65520, TPS65010, TPS65020, TPS65800, TPS51120, TPS51124, etc.

Zhang Hongwei pointed out that as portable products develop towards being thin, light, short and multifunctional, power design manufacturers must understand user needs, and highly integrated, intelligent and easy-to-design power management ICs will be the development direction.

Fairchild: Power solutions for large-size LCD TVs

According to the latest data from IEK, by 2008, 32-42 inch LCD TVs will become the mainstream of the market, accounting for nearly 60% of shipments. It is not difficult to see that the market demand for large-size LCD TVs is constantly rising, and at the same time, it also brings new challenges to the power management and energy saving of large-size LCD TVs. Figure 1 shows the power supply specifications of LCD TVs.

Mr. Lin Tao, manager of Fairchild Semiconductor's Asia Pacific Technology and Application Support Center, pointed out that LCD TV power panels should have lower electromagnetic interference, lower power consumption, higher data frequency and lower cost.

As a leading supplier of analog and discrete power components, Fairchild Semiconductor specializes in designing and manufacturing products that can effectively optimize system power in almost all electronic devices. In addition to the green Fairchild Power Switch (FPS), the product line also includes: PWM controllers, power factor correction (PFC) stand-alone controllers and PFC/PWM combination controllers, error amplifiers/optical couplers, MOSFETs, SMPS IGBTs, diodes, rectifiers and monitoring integrated circuits. These innovative product lines can support customer designs and solve key issues including improving efficiency, reducing standby power consumption, cost, and additional component count.

Among them, the FSCQ series of products provide system designers with solutions to optimize power and performance in high-power applications such as DVD amplifiers and color TVs. This series of products integrates a fully tested avalanche-rated SenseFET and a current-mode PWM IC in a single package to reduce the system's standby power, electromagnetic radiation, circuit board space, and overall component count. These products operate in intermittent mode in standby mode (less than 0.1W at 265Vac input), meeting the 1W initiative of the International Energy Agency (IEA), which is to reduce standby power consumption to less than 1W. This standard specification defines the amount of standby power that a switching power supply (SMPS) can consume in a system in standby mode.

Lin Tao pointed out that Fairchild Semiconductor will continue to respond to the market trends and design challenges brought about by the growing demand for green solutions.

Chongxin Microelectronics: The challenges of portable product power supply design continue

The power design of portable products requires system-level thinking. When developing battery-powered devices, such as mobile phones, MP3, PDA, PMP, DSC and other low-power products, if the power system design is unreasonable, it will affect the architecture of the entire system, the product feature combination, component selection, software design and power distribution architecture. Similarly, in system design, more consideration should be given to saving battery energy. For example, the processors of portable products now generally have several different working states, and a series of different energy-saving modes (idle, sleep, deep sleep, etc.) can reduce the consumption of battery capacity. That is, when the user's system does not need maximum processing power, the processor will enter a low-power mode with less power consumption.

Yan Chongguang, senior engineer at Chongxin Microelectronics, pointed out that from the development trend of portable product power management , the following issues need to be considered:

◆ Power supply design must be considered from the perspective of the entire system design, including cost, performance and time to market

◆ As portable products become increasingly compact and thin, it is necessary to consider the small size and light weight of the power system

◆ Select power management chips with high integration, high reliability, low noise, anti-interference, low power consumption, breaking through the heat dissipation bottleneck and extending battery life

◆ Selecting new product power chips with new technologies and applying them to new design solutions is the basic condition to ensure the advancement of new products and is also the eternal pursuit of portable product power management .

Common power management chips for portable products include low-dropout regulators (LDOs), DC/DC converters based on inductor energy storage, power management chips based on capacitor energy storage, battery charging management, and lithium battery protection.

Yan Chongguang pointed out that the following points should be noted when selecting power management chips:

◆ Select products from manufacturers with mature production technology and excellent quality

◆ Choose chips with high operating frequency to reduce the application cost of peripheral circuits

◆ Choose chips with small packages to meet the volume requirements of portable products

◆ Choose manufacturers with good technical support to facilitate solving problems in application design

◆ Choose chips with complete product information, easy sample and DEMO application, and large-scale supply

◆ Choose chips with good performance/price ratio

Renesas: Power management systems are everywhere

According to a survey by iSuppli, the annual compound growth rate of global power management chip sales from 2003 to 2008 was 12.7%, and sales will rise to US$29.5 billion in 2008. Faced with such a huge market, power design manufacturers have launched different solutions to gain a foothold in the fierce market competition.

Renesas Technology's Mr. Hitoshi Ishikawa proposed Renesas' unique power management concept (Figure 2) i-Pulse:

I-Intelligent; P- Power Management ; U-Combination; L-Low Power; S-Small Package; E-Easy to Use.

Renesas power products are divided into two parts, isolated power products for transformers and non-isolated DC/DC. Among them, isolated power products include: power factor correction (for servers, etc.), AC-DC PWM power supply (general purpose), brick power supply (for telecommunications infrastructure), non-isolated DC/DC includes Hi di/dt POL (personal computers, servers), battery chargers (for handheld devices).

Ishikawa Jin pointed out that from the perspectives of current, process, and packaging, the key technologies of DC-DC and battery chargers are as follows:

◆ Higher efficiency circuit technology

◆ Adopt BiC-DMOS/C-MOS process with built-in power MOSFET

◆ Use packaging with lower power consumption

◆ Fewer external components

POL integrated circuits for mobile phones and desktop computers are also the focus of Renesas. The design rules of large-scale integrated circuits make the voltage lower and lower, and the voltage deviation smaller and smaller. As the functions increase, the power consumption will increase, and POL products come into being. POL can be used for stable and efficient power supply of high-power consumption equipment, such as DSP, power amplifier, and high-precision power supply of equipment with strict voltage conditions, such as DSP, DDR memory.

Ishikawa Jin pointed out that future DC/DC products will have higher response speeds and higher switching frequencies.

Richtek Technology: Actively deploying PMP power supply design

At this forum, Mr. Zheng Gang from RichTek gave a wonderful speech on the market development trend, basic architecture, power requirements, battery selection and management, reasonable selection of power devices and PMP power accessories design of PMP (Portable Multimedia Player). Zheng Gang emphasized that the input and output conditions should be considered to determine the type of power conversion device: boost, buck, automatic buck, constant current. When Vo>=4.2V, select boost mode; 3.1V

At present, lithium-ion/polymer batteries are the best choice for PMP power sources. The batteries must not be overcharged or over-discharged, and their charge and discharge speed must be controlled. For safety reasons, protection circuits are necessary.

Zheng Gang said that reasonable design can fully ensure the safety of battery charging, and the following points need to be noted:

◆ Overcharging can increase capacity, but the battery cycle life is drastically shortened, which harms the interests of end consumers and is not conducive to environmental protection.

◆ Reasonable charging method must be used

◆ When charging via USB port, the USB specification should be met

◆ Automatic temperature management and time management

◆ Overvoltage and undervoltage protection, especially to prevent the danger caused by excessive input voltage

Protection circuit is also very important in PMP power supply design. During the design process, the following aspects need to be considered:

◆ The battery cannot be overcharged or over-discharged

◆ When testing voltage, be careful to avoid the influence of ripple

◆ The battery voltage will rise after the load disappears

◆ Well-designed power conversion devices contain overvoltage and undervoltage protection functions. After protection, the device will lock. When encountering this phenomenon, you must carefully find the root cause.

◆ The reset circuit provides the system with voltage detection and reset signals, giving it a good start and eliminating the negative effects of interference on the power supply system. System designers can distinguish between power-on reset and interference reset. When encountering an interference reset, it can automatically enter operation from the normal point before the reset to try to eliminate the impact of the interference.

ADI: Providing a comprehensive power management solution

Analog Devices is a leading manufacturer of high-performance analog integrated circuits, and its products are widely used in analog and digital signal processing. Mr. Zhai Zhijun, Marketing and Application Strategy Manager of ADI Greater China and Asia Pacific Power Management Products, brought detailed power solutions, including power supplies for consumer and PC fields.

The power supply in the consumer field involves buck-boost DC/DC converters, LDO for handheld devices, backlight and flash LED driver control chips. PC power supplies are widely used to power CPU cores and POL loads; the highly reliable AC/DC secondary side and PC control chips with thermal protection are widely praised.

ADP1823 is a general and economical synchronous PWM step-down control chip, suitable for various high-power power supply applications, such as mobile communication base stations. The chip drives all N-channel power MOSFETs, has a wide power supply voltage input, the output voltage can be adjusted down to 0.6V, and the load current can reach up to 20A. ADP1823 has dual outputs, can track the output voltage, has soft start function and multiple protections, the output voltage accuracy is ±0.85%, and can be synchronized with an external clock.

ADP1652 is a high-brightness LED flash driver chip controlled by I2C bus. I2C controls the LED output current. The chip can work in torch and flash modes. The minimum current in torch mode is 35mA, and the current in flash mode can reach 500mA. ADP1652 has two GPIO ports and chip indication function, and has four fault displays. At the same time, there are multiple protection functions such as output voltage and overheating. The internal soft start can reduce input stress, and the watchdog can protect the LED. ADP1652 uses a 3×3 package to reduce the PCB size. Zhai Zhijun said that the power supply market is huge, and ADI will continue to provide users with comprehensive and excellent power management solutions.

BCD: Environmentally friendly power supply technology application, green power supply first

As energy issues have become more and more the focus of worldwide attention, governments and related organizations have begun to actively promote the concept of green power products. Green power refers to power products whose input power factor, input current harmonics, electromagnetic compatibility (EMC) and other performance indicators that have a pollution effect on the peripheral electromagnetic environment, as well as safety and other performance indicators meet the requirements of relevant national standards, and whose manufacturing materials, manufacturing processes and manufacturing processes meet the requirements of national environmental protection standards. It has the characteristics of energy saving, environmental protection and convenience. At present, some manufacturers have launched green power products (Figure 3).

Liu Xinfeng, BCD Power IC System Engineer/Division Manager from BCD Semiconductor Manufacturing Co., Ltd., shared BCD green power product series AP384XG, AP3700, AP3101, AP3702 with the audience at this forum. Liu Xinfeng pointed out that standby power consumption is an important indicator of green power products, and with the rapid economic growth, China is facing an increasingly severe energy crisis, and the launch of green power products is just in time.

In the future, developing green power products with design concepts such as quietness, energy saving, environmental protection, and wide range will become the goal that power supply manufacturers continue to pursue.