Solutions Search - Power System Management (PSM)
What is PSM?
Linear Technology’s Power System Management (PSM) devices add digital PMBus/SMBus/I2C-interface based control, telemetry and black-box fault recording to analog DC/DC power converters, providing the following high level capabilities to your power system:
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Why Use PSM?
System Level Benefits
- Energy Consumption: Monitor and predict energy use vs system load/traffic. Optimize performance vs energy consumed with power domains, load shedding and tweaking supply voltages.
- Reliability: Improve board reliability by precise control of power supplies over time and temperature, continuous monitoring and correlating board failure to EEPROM fault logs (black-box recorder).
- Predict Failures: Avoid failures by monitoring board health in real-time to predict board aging and replacement.
- Maintenance: Provide power system field upgrades via firmware, and control power system remotely.
Design Level Benefits
- PSM brings the software model of rapid prototyping and tweaking to hardware.
- Easily trim, margin, sequence, supervise, fault-log/manage and monitor multiple rails with one product.
- Margin boards to improve reliability, increase yield and test FPGA timing.
- Improve time-to-market by avoiding costly board re-spins.
- Get complete access to board level diagnostics.
- Replace discrete circuitry with space-saving integrated solution.
Benefits of Linear Technology PSM
Linear Technology’s Power System Management products offer cutting edge features such as:
- A complete, ready-to-use solution architected by power supply experts, using the industry standard PMBus digital interface.
- Trim, margin and monitor supply outputs to ±0.25% accuracy, guaranteed over temperature.
- Breadth of products for a comprehensive portfolio (more information under PSM Product Types):
- LTpowerPlay GUI: Engineering level development environment with remote debug capability and integrated help. Eliminates code development.
- PMBus compliant commands over I2C/SMBus digital interface.
- Autonomous Operation: No software coding required.
- Coordinated sequencing and fault management across devices.
Getting Started
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Linear Technology PSM Product Types
There are two PSM product types:
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Dual 13A μModule Regulator with Digital Interface for Remote Monitoring & Control of Power
Jan 15th 2014
Digital Power System Management: Set, Monitor, Change and Log Power
Managing power and implementing flexibility in a high rail count circuit board can be challenging, requiring hands-on probing with digital voltmeters and oscilloscopes, and often rework of PCB components. To simplify power management, especially from a remote ...
PMBus Spec Working Group Issues Version 1.3 For Review
Sep 26th 2013
The PMBus Specification Working Group has released the PMBus 1.3 specification proposal for adopter review. The updated specification adds features and improves performance of PMBus 1.2 and adds AVS Bus (Part III). If the Working Group achieves its goals, the new specification will complete its review process and be approved ...
Fault Management Architecture
Jul 11th 2013
I recently had some enquiries into using PMBus communication to manage faults vs. built-in fault management. The question was two fold: what is the impact of using PMBus to make fault-off decisions, and what can be done to build system wide fault logs?
Before I dig into these two uses of PMBus, let’s consider what is ...
Digital Loops Are Not the Same as Analog Loops
Apr 10th 2013
I recently heard a claim that at the output of a power converter, digital and analog loop are the same. The claim went like this:
“a power supply using digital power control techniques will appear identical to the end user as a power supply using analog power control techniques.”
This reminds me of the classic ...
Digital Power: Why Should I Care About Accuracy?
Dec 17th 2012
We looked at why we care about the digital side of Digital Power in the last post, but what about the analog side of digital power? Does the accuracy at the other end of the Digital Power device matter? It turns out, it matters more than most people realize.
An example error budget
Let’s use an actual IC specification ...
Digital Power: Why Should I Care About Integration?
Dec 4th 2012
You have seen how Digital Power allows rails to work as a team, and how tools enable configuration and debug. Now it is time to step back and look at how Digital Power fits into a system. In particular, how Digital Power integrates with Board Controllers defined by industry standards.
Why should we care about standards?
In ...
Digital Power Debug
Sep 20th 2012
Introduction to the Powerstick System
A picture speaks a thousand words, so let’s just cut to the chase and look at the hardware and software we will be using.
Above you can see three Powersticks, each with 14 rails, and one green LED per rail to indicate power. On the bottom right is a 12V DC input, and a DC1613A ...
Digital Point of Load Converters vs. Digital Managers
Sep 1st 2012
When should you use a Point of Load Converter (POL) with PMBus, and when should you use a Digital Manager with old school POLs? In this post I will provide some heuristics for making this choice.
So as to not mislead, my goal is modest: to provide enough intuition to make a first pass choice, that becomes an area to explore ...
Digital Power Supervision and Telemetry
Aug 21st 2012
What does a Digital Power device do between start-up and shutdown? Two core functions are supervision and telemetry. Supervision is a fast acting safety feature that prevents damage to the device and/or load. Telemetry is an ongoing quality management feature.
A recent advertisement in Bodo’s Power Systems listed the ...
Digital Power Sequencing
Aug 14th 2012
Power Sequencing is a key component of Digital Power Architectures. In this post we will take a look at several ways to architect sequencing, and its consequences. In particular, we will see how design choices impact flexibility late in the design process.
Building Blocks of Power Conversion
Let’s take a look at our ...
Digital Power Management
Jul 31st 2012
Many Digital Power products use the industry standard PMBus to enable system architects to manage and control multi-rail power architectures. However, many people are uncertain how to apply PMBus to solve real world problems. Over the course of the coming months I am going to blog on different topics related to the practical ...
Using LTpowerPlay to Manage the LTC2978
Sep 17th 2010
The LTC2978 features enable power supply supervision, monitoring, sequencing and trimming with unmatched accuracy. These features combined with our easy to use GUI, assist the power supply designer in defining and implementing complex power management schemes in a fraction of the time previously possible. Fault logging capability ...
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