Wolfson adds to Power Management family

The WM8320 is the latest addition to Wolfson's WM83xx power management portfolio, and is targeted at providing smaller, more efficient and lower cost solutions to applications that use ARM-based processors, particularly netbooks, mobile internet devices, smartphones, handsets and digital photo frames.

The WM8320 incorporates Wolfson's unique BuckWise(tm) regulator technology, which enables the power management integrated circuits (PMICs) to cope with shifts in power requirements, as different product functions are switched on and off by the user. Offering the best-in-class transient performance, the new BuckWise regulator technology eliminates any disturbances in the power supply outputs which can often be caused by rapid changes in power requirements, without the need to add large external components, or reduce the processor speed to lower the load current. The WM8320 can also be used in applications where there is no system battery, such as set-top boxes.

These features combine to enable the creation of new and exciting multimedia platforms, whilst significantly reducing power consumption, system cost, design and manufacturing complexity and time-to-market. With the WM8320, consumer electronics manufacturers can make significant cost savings by using smaller components such as SMT chip inductors rather than expensive large discrete wirewound inductors. In conjunction with this, board space area can be reduced by 25 percent over previous generation solutions.

Wolfson's power management product line includes a complete family of market leading PMICs, delivering unprecedented programmability and unparalleled performance capabilities, offering product manufacturers an attractive combination of reduced time to market, improved end user experience, future proof design and lower total cost of ownership.

Sitting beside the application processor at the heart of consumer products, such as mobile phones, navigation devices and media players, PMIC devices intelligently manage and optimise the use of power within the system to maximise battery life. The unique design of the WM83xx family enables limitless configuration options making it compatible with all application and mobile graphics processors, including all ARM-based processors, and configurable to address other architectures.

Jess Brown, Wolfson's Power Management Product Line Manager said: It is a challenge for systems engineers to deliver ever smaller and more efficient power management solutions, which still offer a high performance multimedia experience. Building on Wolfson's strong power management portfolio, the WM8320 provides an integrated lower cost solution which meets these demands, as well as helping to deliver electronic consumer devices with new and improved end user experiences.

The WM8320 has four DC-DC synchronous regulators, two 1.2A, which incorporate BuckWise technology, and two 1.0A. The two 1A regulators can be grouped together to generate a combined 1.6A output to support large memory banks, or to increase efficiency by pre-regulating any of the ten LDOs integrated in the WM8320.

The enhanced transient performance also saves power, enabling the processor to run at lower voltages, improving power efficiency. System designers can choose to reduce processor power consumption by up to 25% over previous generations of regulators, or to increase processor speed by up to 25%. So that, for example, smart phone designers can enable users to multitask for longer while still maintaining high quality gaming, music playback and video resolution.

Patent pending EEPROM interface technology maximises design process flexibility, allowing product designers to override the one time programmable memory of the PMIC as many times as they want, while perfecting their design in terms of start-up sequences and voltage levels. Product development and migration needs are easily accommodated, making the WM8320 and the WM831x family future-proof choices.