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Powervation Announces Availability of Industry's First Auto-Control(TM) Digital Power-Conversion Chip

Posted on: Monday, 15 June 2009, 07:30 CDT

PALO ALTO, Calif. and LIMERICK, Ireland, June 15 /PRNewswire/ -- Powervation, a leading provider of IC solutions for energy control and management in information processing systems, today announced the availability of the PV3002, the company's inaugural product and the industry's first Auto-control(TM) digital power-conversion IC. The new chip is aimed at electronic systems used in Computing, NetComms and Storage applications where it brings fully automatic adaptive control to DC-DC conversion for the first time. Now, designers of power supplies have an intelligent "no compromises" solution that is impervious to variations in component values and applications context, making it easier to build complex designs that conform to today's stringent energy-efficient standards.

At half the size of comparative analog solutions, the PV3002 can reduce total system component counts by as much as 50 percent. This advantage cuts system costs and improves Mean Time Before Failure (MTBF). In beta tests at multiple customer sites, the chip demonstrated efficiency gains of more than 10 percent for light-load configurations while improving stability and transient performance. Moreover, at the system level, the PV3002 enables digital power management at no extra cost, delivering energy savings of up to 30 percent and reducing overall cost of ownership by 30 percent.

Empowering Engineers with the Plug-and-Power(TM) Advantages of True Adaptive Control

Powervation achieves these breakthroughs via its unique Auto-control technology that empowers engineers with new ease-of-design capabilities and eliminates the time-consuming challenge of accounting for the production tolerances of all components in the control loop. Unlike conventional analog regulators that use external components and require complex calculations to compensate the controller, Powervation's Auto-control regulates and monitors the output voltage on a cycle-by-cycle basis and automatically compensates for variations in line, load, capacitance and inductance. The key driver of this capability is "MOJO," a single parameter that is used to adjust the loop compensation (poles, zeros and gain) to guarantee stability and best performance. The result is "true" adaptive control that eliminates the need for the designer to compensate the control loop. For designers of power supplies, this plug-and-power breakthrough can cut design time from weeks to days.

Boosting System Efficiency and Performance

With Auto-control at its core, the PV3002 is custom-built for Computing, NetComms, Storage and other applications where a more efficient power supply has become a key competitive differentiator. Here, the PV3002 exerts a considerable advantage. For instance, in advanced networking equipment such as mid-range Ethernet switches where there may be as many as 150 different voltage rails in a single switch fabric, optimizing power management across the entire system is extraordinarily complex. With true adaptive control, the PV3002 intelligently distributes the power, enabling the system to consistently operate at peak efficiency.

According to Powervation's Vice President of Marketing, Benoit Herve, the PV3002 represents a fundamental shift in power-supply design and solves the most pressing performance, reliability and cost challenges facing designers. "It is the first product in the industry to reliably adapt power conversion to changing system behavior and unpredictable variations, and guarantees unprecedented stability over a wide range of conditions throughout the lifetime of the system. Customers report that with Auto-control, they can breach the performance barriers that have limited traditional digital power technologies -- a breakthrough that offers unprecedented ease-of-use and new efficiency advantages," concluded Herve.

PV3002 Features and Benefits

• Auto-control technology
  • Real-time automatic adjustment of the compensation
  • Guaranteed stability
  • Improved transient response
  • Improved efficiency
• Multi-phase operation
  • One or two-phase operation
  • Digital current sharing
  • Phase add-and-drop with auto-compensation
• Monitoring
  • Precise current monitoring
  • Internal and external temperature sensing
• Power conversion
  • Wide output and input voltage range
  • Differential voltage sense
  • Precise voltage set point accuracy (+/- 10mV)
• Power management
  • Fault detection (OVP, OTP, UVLO)
  • SMBus(TM) communication
  • High-reliability non-volatile memory (fuse-based OTP)
• Single 3.3V supply operation
• RoHS compliant 32-lead plastic QFN package

PV3002 Packaging and Pricing

The PV3002 is available in a space-saving 5 x 5mm squared QFN package and is fully specified over the -40 degrees C to +85 degrees C temperature range. Prices start at $2.75 each for 1000-piece quantities.

About Powervation

Powervation provides a new class of Auto-control(TM) digital power IC solutions that optimize power-supply performance and efficiencies for manufacturers of electronic systems used in computing, NetComms and other applications. In a simple yet revolutionary Plug-and-Power(TM) package, the company's unique technology delivers a reliable, scalable solution that reduces design complexity and cost, and accelerates time-to-market of eco power-smart systems. Powervation maintains corporate offices in Limerick, Ireland, Palo Alto, Calif. and Taipei, Taiwan. To learn more, please visit www.powervation.com

Auto-control(TM) and Plug-and-Power(TM) are trademarks of Powervation.

Other trademarked terms referenced in this press release are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Powervation

Source: PR Newswire

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