DIGITAL POWER
manufacturers of digital power supplies have produced many products aimed at this market. Growth in this market is driven largely by demands for greater efficiency which digital power solutions can help achieve by offering system monitoring, power sequencing and optimisation of power usage in applications. It can also help to simplify the power management function which for many applications is growing in complexity, particularly for those with higher power ratings. Demand for higher reliability under constant usage is another key growth driver.
The use of digital power in designs can offer greater power density and a reduction in the number of components which can result in higher system reliability. With rising demands for scalability and minimal system downtime of applications in this sector, the ability to monitor, control and sequence power at numerous levels of the telecom/datacom system is becoming ever more important and is predicted to drive even greater adoption of digital power components.
The server market has been another major early adopter of digital power solutions. Adoption has again been driven by greater energy efficiency demands. Standards bodies such as Energy Star continue to demand higher efficiencies and low idle power draws. The majority of enterprise servers now use digital power solutions for the Vcore (which supplies power to the processing core) and memory. Outside of the applications already mentioned, adoption of digital power solutions is predicted to occur rapidly and drive aggressive growth as manufacturers become more aware of the benefits they can offer compared with some analog products. These include reducing the overall bill of materials cost by reducing the number of discrete components, reducing the overall footprint, increasing power density, providing the ability to monitor and optimise power levels and system requirements whilst in operation and speeding up product time to market. Over two-thirds of the manufacturers and designers surveyed by IHS predicted that more than 10 percent of their products will have digital control or digital management in 2015.
Applications, besides telecom/datacom and servers that are projected to have strong growth in the next five years include notebooks, some industrial applications, high-end consumer
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The server market has been
another major early adopter of digital power solutions. Adoption has again been driven by greater energy efficiency demands. Standards bodies such as Energy Star continue to demand higher efficiencies and low idle power draws. The majority of enterprise servers now use digital power solutions for the Vcore (which supplies power to the processing core) and memory
devices, solar inverters and towards the end of the period, lighting. However, there are still barriers to adoption. Of the manufacturers and designers surveyed by IHS, 27 percent stated that cost was still the largest barrier. This highlights lack of knowledge from some potential implementers regarding the overall cost savings that digital solutions can provide and shows that there is still some way to go in educating designers at OEMs/ODMs. Another issue, raised mainly by the digital power supply and digital power IC manufacturers was that there are many designers that are wary of digital solutions and prefer to continue using the analog approach that they know and are comfortable with.
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To combat this, many manufacturers who were manufacturing just digital control products (where the feedback loop and PWM output is entirely within the digital domain) have started producing digital management products that are a hybrid to bridge the gap between analog and digital solutions. These products have an on-board microcontroller or microprocessor that works in conjunction with an analog PWM. Whilst these products provide feedback and allow monitoring, they might not have a communication protocol in which the parameters of the product can be modified. Despite this, it is expected that in the long term, solutions with full digital control will dominate the market due to the increased functionality. The full report on this market is available from IMS Research.
Jonathon Eykyn, Analyst, Power Management & Conversion for IHS.
© 2013 Angel Business Communications. Permission required.
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www.siliconsemiconductor.net Issue I 2013
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