High performance integrated circuits

News Release from: Summit Microelectronics
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial Team on 5 August 2003

Sequencer supervises six supplies

The SMS66 is a six-channel programmable power-supply sequencer with a rich set of monitoring and housekeeping functions.

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The SMS66 is a six-channel programmable power-supply sequencer with a rich set of monitoring and housekeeping functions. Typical applications for the device include server, networking and communications equipment where carrier-class availability (99.999% up time) is required. The SMS66 is user-configurable to sequence as many as six voltage supplies in any order during both power-up and power-down transitions.

This sequencing can be set to cascade each supply once the prior supply completes its transition, therefore relieving the user of the need to estimate the slew rate of each supply voltage.

Further, the user can select one of several delay times before that supply is actuated.

This guarantees that unwanted supply crossover does not occur.

The SMS66 monitors Vdd (2.7-5.5V), a second "high supply" (7-15V), two external general-purpose analogue signals, and finally, the internal chip temperature, all to 10bit precision.

Such precision (5mV steps) is more than adequate to handle the tightening accuracy requirements of ever-reducing supply voltages.

Any of these five signals can be set to generate fault reporting and, if desired, a reset with either an orderly sequenced or an immediate forced shutdown of all supplies.

Reset can also be generated in the event of a power-up stall of programmable duration.

Finally, the SMS66 allows external use of the +/-0.6% on-chip voltage reference.

The SMS66 is accessed using the popular I2C bus to exercise complete control of the board's power characteristics.

This can be programmed during production, or each time the board is booted up, or during normal operation "on the fly".

To speed user product development using the SMS66 and Summit's other programmable products, Summit offers customers the SMX3200 programming system.

This is a complete development system that lets designers easily manipulate the characteristics of their system.

The SMX3200 design kit includes menu-driven Microsoft Windows GUI software to automate programming tasks and also includes the necessary hardware to interface to the parallel port of a laptop or PC.

Once a user completes design and prototyping, the SMX3200 automatically generates a hex data file that can be transmitted to Summit for review and approval.

Summit then assigns a unique customer identification code to the hex file and programs the customer's production devices prior to final electrical test operations.

This ensures the device will operate properly in the end application.

The design kit software can be downloaded today from Summit's website.

An evaluation card containing the SMS66 controller, six DC/DC convertors, support circuitry, and a port for "plug-and-play" programming via the SMX33200 dongle interface is available.

Available in volume quantities today, the SMS66 comes in a 48-pin TQFP surface-mount package.

Commercial temperature range pricing is $6.80 in 10,000-unit quantities.

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