“The number of power supply rails in a circuit board has been steadily increasing,” said Shakeel Peera, Director of Strategic Marketing for Lattice Semiconductor. “These new application notes help expedite implementation of a centralized, scalable and flexible power management algorithm within a single Platform Manager device.”
Power management functions include supply sequencing, monitoring, hot-swap control, reset and other supervisory signal generation. The complexity of power management functions grows significantly when the number of circuit board power supplies increases. The solution often demands the use of multiple power management devices. As a result, designers typically are forced to partition the overall power management task and implement it using distributed algorithms in multiple devices, a costly and time consuming approach. The inadequacies of this approach become apparent only during the board debug stage, forcing board re-spin and costly project delays. The integrated power management approach made possible by the Platform Manager devices, on the other hand, reduces cost and increases board reliability.
The application notes describe unrestricted access to power supply status indicators and the ability to control all board management functions. Designers are easily able to modify their algorithm to meet unforeseen power management requirements and minimize the need for a board re-spin.
Designs for the Power Manager II and Platform Manager devices are implemented using Lattice PAC-Designer and Lattice Diamond design software tools that are available for download free of charge from the Lattice website.