Four-channel option in voltage controller family

The SMM465 is a four-channel precision voltage controller offering margining, the industry's most accurate active control during ongoing operation, cascaded sequencing and monitoring.

The SMM465 is a four-channel precision voltage controller offering margining, the industry's most accurate active control during ongoing operation (+/-0.2% guaranteed), cascaded sequencing, and monitoring.

Summit's precision controller family now comprises the SMM105, SMM205, SMM465 and SMM665 - single, dual, quad and six-channel devices.

The SMM465 is based on the award-winning SMM665 (Analog Zone 2003 power management product of the year).

The SMM465 uses an engineering concept created by Summit called Active DC Output Control (ADOC) and introduced with the SMM665.

The ADOC function intelligently maintains the output voltage of up to four DC/DC convertors on the user's board, dramatically improving voltage accuracy in ongoing system use - typically to +/-0.1% of voltage output, and guaranteed to +/-0.2%.

This compares with several percent or more in DC/DC convertors when not using Summit ADOC.

The SMM465 is highly useful in circuit board production to perform "margining".

This is the temporary adjusting of each of the four DC/DC convertor supply voltages up to +/-10% in any combination, up or down - so that sensitivity of the system to power supply changes can be determined.

Margining is usually done board-by-board in production to test for these manufacturing variations, and is highly useful in wringing sensitivities out of prototype boards before production launch.

A growing number of leading suppliers of computer, industrial, communications and datacomms products have mandated margining in production for all of the circuit boards in their products.

The SMM465 can be configured to sequence up to four voltage supplies in any order during both power-up and power-down transitions.

This sequencing can be set by the user to cascade each supply as the prior supply completes its transition, therefore eliminating the guesswork of estimating the slew rate of each supply voltage depending on its loading, and specifying a safe delay time before the next supply can be actuated.

Cascaded sequencing guarantees that unwanted crossover will not occur.

The SMM465 can be accessed by the popular I2C bus to exercise complete control of the board's power characteristics.

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

To speed user product development using the SMM465 and Summit's other programmable products, Summit offers customers the SMX3200 programming system.

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

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

This system has seen widespread acceptance by users since it was introduced four years ago.

Once a user completes design and prototyping, 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 that 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 SMM465 controller, four DC/DC convertors, all required associated circuitry, and a port for "plug and play" programming via the SMX3200 dongle interface is available.

A three-digit digital voltmeter is required to see the voltage accuracy enhancement provided by the SMM465 - typically as small as +/-0.1% error (guaranteed to +/- 0.2%), compared with the +/-2% or even +/-4% variation of typical convertor bricks when the SMM465 is removed.

Available in volume quantities today, the SMM465 comes in a 48-pin TQFP surface-mount package.

Pricing of the SMM465 is $6.30 10,000 unit quantities and of the SMM665 is $8.40.

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