Alliance Adds Configurable CPU Supervisor Family

Oct 20, 2004 12:07 PM
Edited by PETech Staff

Alliance Semiconductor Corporation has expanded its family of CPU supervisor products to include two new product families, ASM1232 and ASM1832. The ASM1332 and ASM1832 general-purpose supervisors provide configuration options for system designers looking to add reliable power management solutions across a variety of electronics markets.

Specifically designed to keep systems from malfunctioning during power-up, power-down or brownout conditions, Alliance’s ASM1232 and ASM1832 ICs are cost-effective, low-power supervisory circuits designed for monitoring power supplies in microprocessor and microcontroller-based systems. These ICs include a debounced manual reset input, as well as configurable dual level threshold detection to restart a “hung” microprocessor in the event voltages drift out of tolerance or even after complete power supply failure. The pushbutton manual reset allows the user to externally invoke a reset, during a “hang” or when the system has become unresponsive. To further enhance system reliability, an internal watchdog timer can be configured to automatically reset the microprocessor after a preset period of inactivity. This is especially useful in set top box (STB) and telecom applications where a loss of signal or instability may cause undesired responses, requiring a soft reset to be initiated.

The ASM1232 and ASM1832 include tolerance select inputs (TOL) that can be used to specify reset threshold tolerances of 5% and 10% for the ASM1232 in 5-V applications, and 10% and 20% for the 3.3-V ASM1832. Both parts include a pushbutton manual reset input and a watchdog timer with reset functionality that is user configurable to time-out periods of 150 ms, 610 ms or 1200ms.

For more information, visit www.alsc.com.

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