Power technology innovation is the only way for the development of smart phones

　　Smartphone system power consumption is expected to drop significantly. Processor, power management chip (PMIC) and sensor manufacturers are separately developing mobile device application processor and screen power saving solutions, including the new generation of CPU/GPU collaborative computing and big.LITTLE core design architecture, panel automatic refresh (PSR), highly integrated PMIC, and active backlight adjustment (PRISM) and other energy-saving technologies, which are the product development focus of related manufacturers this year.

　　In addition to energy-saving technologies, mobile phone wireless charging solutions also have great market development potential and have attracted many PMIC companies to invest in research and development. The power consumption of smartphone screens and application processors each accounts for about 30-60% of the system power consumption, so extending battery life must start from these two aspects. In terms of processors, Qualcomm, Samsung, MediaTek and ARM are working hard to innovate chip design. In addition to jointly promoting the heterogeneous system architecture (HSA) standard for collaborative computing of central processing units (CPUs) and graphics processing units (GPUs) to reduce CPU burden and power consumption, they have also successively launched the big.LITTLE solution with high-performance CPU cores and low-power cores to further reduce processor leakage current and dynamic power consumption.

　　As processor specifications change, PMIC manufacturers are also working hard to develop a new generation of power management technology. In addition to responding to the switching needs of big.LITTLE cores and boosting the dynamic adjustment speed of PMIC voltage and current, they will also develop high-current output solutions to meet the power supply needs of HSA processors that simultaneously drive heterogeneous cores such as CPUs and GPUs. Xu Hanzhou pointed out that as the functions of mobile device systems become more complex, the requirements for PMIC specifications continue to rise, which has stimulated PMIC manufacturers such as Dialog to develop next-generation PMICs that integrate heterogeneous processing cores; and to accelerate the pace of process evolution to reduce the size of chips and make heterogeneous integration easier.

　　As for screen energy saving, NVIDIA has introduced the second-generation PRISM technology in its latest mobile processor platform. This solution uses a multi-core GPU and advanced imaging algorithms to divide the image into different blocks and detect changes in light and dark. The processor dynamically adjusts the brightness of the LED backlight source, thereby saving 40% of the display power consumption.

　　Currently, first-tier processor manufacturers are also planning to introduce the PSR function of eDP1.3 in their next-generation products, allowing the GPU to sleep when the screen image is still, and the display panel's timing controller (TCON) to directly perform data updates to save power consumption of the panel transmission interface.

　　Not only are processor and PMIC manufacturers competing to promote power-saving solutions for mobile devices, sensor suppliers are also pushing ambient light (Ambient) plus infrared proximity (IRProximity) light sensor modules, which allow the brightness of the mobile phone screen to be dynamically adjusted, or automatically turn off the backlight when the screen does not need to be turned on, thereby extending the battery life of the device.

It is expected that the output value of power management ICs 　　for mobile devices will soar from US$1.5 billion in 2012 to US$2.4 billion in 2016; among them, the PMIC that supplies power to application processors and baseband processors will have the highest growth rate. Recently, MediaTek has been actively strengthening its own PMIC technology in order to seize more business opportunities in the mobile device market.