A brief analysis of the problems existing in the development of the digital power market

　　As energy conservation becomes a major issue in today's world, power management is becoming more and more important, and the improvement of technology is constantly optimizing the energy efficiency of the system. However, in the face of concepts such as "high integration" and "digitalization", companies are more concerned about practical issues such as market and cost.

　　Power management chips have been described as the Cinderella of the semiconductor industry, which shows that power management chips have long been considered an insignificant supporting role in the semiconductor industry. However, unlike the ups and downs of the digital circuit market, power management chips have maintained a long-term and stable growth momentum. Databeans' market research results show that the global sales of power management chips exceeded US$8 billion in 2007, and the growth this year is expected to reach 7%. With the continuous rise in crude oil prices, the application of energy-saving is undoubtedly putting on red shoes for Cinderella, and power management applications are stepping towards the forefront of the semiconductor industry.

　　Technological innovation promotes energy efficiency

　　Energy saving is the main theme of today's electronic manufacturing, and various power management chips are playing an increasingly important role in this field. Many countries use administrative means or even legislation to encourage manufacturers to use energy-saving technologies in their products.

　　When it comes to energy saving, people often think of large factories with roaring machines first. In fact, the energy consumption in the field of information technology applications is also very alarming worldwide. In this regard, Tong Armstrong, product marketing manager of Linear Technology's power products department, gave a vivid explanation in an interview with reporters: "Take the power consumption of servers that distribute millions of YouTube videos and maintain economical operation as an example. Between 2000 and 2005, its power consumption doubled, and it is likely to rise by another 75% by 2010. In 2005, in order to keep the world's data centers owned by Internet giants such as Google, Microsoft and Yahoo online, its power consumption was equivalent to the total power generation of 14 100 million watt power plants. The power consumed by the server clusters in the United States alone requires five of the above giant power plants to operate around the clock. In 2005, the power consumption of the US server clusters reached 1.2% of the total power generation in the United States that year. The utility fee for this part of energy consumption was 2.7 billion US dollars. It can be seen that for the US server clusters alone, a 1% reduction in energy consumption at this level will mean an annual savings of 27 million US dollars!"

　　Wang Ruixing, Vice President of Fairchild Semiconductor's Technology and Application Support Center in Asia Pacific, also told reporters: "Improving energy efficiency is the main development trend of the semiconductor market. The continuous tightening of fuel supply, coupled with the introduction of relevant energy efficiency standards that are widely adopted around the world, are driving the continued growth of demand for new low-power energy-saving technologies. Power management ICs will continue to adopt innovative energy-saving methods to meet these major energy efficiency challenges, thereby improving energy efficiency and space efficiency." He also pointed out that abandoning single-phase AC/DC motors and using variable-speed motors can save up to 40% of energy, and changing induction motors to permanent magnet motors can increase efficiency by 5%. It can be seen that the contribution of power management to energy conservation is based on continuous technological breakthroughs.

　　Be cautious when integrating power management chips

　　Although power management technology does not follow "Moore's Law", the development of semiconductor manufacturing technology also has a profound impact on power management chips. As the integration of SoC continues to increase, many product processors have integrated power management functions, so system manufacturers do not need to match corresponding power management chips on the periphery. Therefore, some industry insiders are worried that if more and more power management functions are integrated into the processor, the market space for separate power management chips may be compressed.

　　Pei Shiyan, president of Beijing Siwang Electronic Technology Co., Ltd., told reporters that such concerns have existed for at least five years, but the market seems to be moving in the opposite direction. Recently, several companies that design MP4 and digital camera main chips are even considering separating the power management function from the main chip, and they hope that power management chip design companies can provide power management solutions that work with their main chips.

　　"The reason for their choice is simple. To stay ahead in the market, these companies must provide products with the most complete functions as quickly as possible," Pei Shiyan explained. "In addition, their products are under pressure to save energy, which requires different voltages for different parts of the chip, so it takes extra time to design power management functions for the chip. However, this part of the power management design work does not expand the overall functionality of the chip, so it is usually not recognized by end users. This is why these design companies are happy to gradually separate the power management function from the main chip."

　　Despite this, industry experts still believe that single-chip solutions are still the development direction in the field of portable electronic products, and power management units (PMUs) that integrate multiple power management devices will also accelerate development.

　　Digital power management is not mature yet

　　In the competition with digital circuits, analog circuits have lost their sphere of influence in the fields of communications, networks, and smart home appliances, but the power management position remains unshakable.

　　However, in recent years, digital power management chip products have also begun to attract attention from the industry. Some experts pointed out that in applications that are easy to use and require few parameter changes, analog power products may have more advantages because their application targeting can be achieved through hardware solidification; while in complex high-performance system applications with more controllable factors, faster real-time response speed, and the need for multiple analog system power management, digital power has greater advantages.

　　However, there are still many obstacles for digital power to be widely promoted and applied, and it is still difficult to make a big breakthrough in the foreseeable future. Wu Jianxing, deputy director of the Research Institute of Hangzhou Silan Microelectronics Co., Ltd., said in an interview: "There are many challenges in switching from analog control to digital control. For example, the response speed or bandwidth, the digital control circuit is a sampling system, involving CPU and ADC delay and other issues, while the response of analog control is instantaneous; another example is the processing technology, the large number of digital circuits in the digital power supply force the use of small-size standard CMOS processes to reduce costs, and analog circuits are usually difficult to obtain high performance on these processes. Therefore, high-performance digital power products are challenging in design and manufacturing, and the digitization and intelligence of the power system takes a certain amount of time."

　　The biggest obstacle to the promotion of digital power management chips is probably the cost issue. Zhang Yi, CEO of Shanghai Lingxin Microelectronics Co., Ltd., told reporters: "Pure digital power management chips generally require additional A/D and D/A. The price of standard A/D and D/A devices is higher than that of general analog power management chips. The main research now is to make A/D and D/A just enough to reduce costs, so they have been applied to relatively expensive systems such as servers and communication power supplies. To use them widely, we still need to solve the cost problem."