Power Supply Vendors Announce POLs Using Digital Power

Sep 21, 2005 2:49 PM

At least week’s Digital Power Forum in Boston, two power supply vendors announced their development of digitally controlled power converters. Nonisolated point-of-load converters (POLs), the new products feature wide input voltage range and programmable output voltage. One of these POLs is among the first to offer a PMBus-compliant interface.

That PMBus compliant POL is the DPL20C from Artesyn Technologies. Operating from a 4.5-V to 13.8-V input, the converter produces a programmable 0.6-V to 5.5- V output at 20 A. The DPL20C features an extensive set of digital configuration, monitoring and diagnostic facilities accessible via the PMBus interface. The converter stores all configuration and set-up data in nonvolatile memory, and powers-up with these pre-programmed default settings, thus eliminating the need for external power controllers. Intended for computing, storage and networking applications, the DPL20C is rated for forced air environments with ambient operating temperatures of 0°C to 70°C.

Sampling of the product along with evaluation boards to the first beta customers has begun. General availability and production will start on completion of beta trials, expected within the next few weeks. In the future, the company plans to introduce similar products that will encompass different current ratings and mechanical form factors, as well as feature increasingly higher levels of digital control and integration. For further information, see www.artesyn.com/powergroup/new_digitalpol_launch.htm.

Meanwhile, another power supply vendor, Delta Electronics, announced that it has begun shipping samples of its Digital X-Power 30 (DXP 30) 30-A power converter, which the company describes as a building block for a new open Digital Power Architecture. To develop the POL, Delta collaborated with chip supplier Primarion, and the DXP 30 design is based on Primarion’s latest digital multiphase PWM controller.

Measuring 0.5-in. × 0.5-in. × 1.0-in., the DXP 30 is designed to operate from an input voltage of 7 V to 11 V and provides adjustable output voltages from 0.8 V to 2.5 V in digitally defined step resolutions of 1.62 mV. The DXP 30 boasts a useable (55°C, 200 LFM) current density of 60 A/in² and a power density of up to 216 W/in³.

The DXP 30 supports a new power architecture jointly developed by Delta and a leading networking company. The DXP 30 product was developed to address the ever-growing demands of increased current and power densities in networking applications while also providing maximum flexibility for system configurations. However, according to Delta, the converter’s benefits can easily be applied to other applications.

Additional information on the Digital X-Power 30 product, including data sheets, application notes and OEM pricing, will be available in Q4 of this year.

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