Mobile Systems Poised to Take Advantage of Power-Pinching ICs and Architectures

Aug 1, 2010 12:00 PM
Sam Davis, Editor-in-Chief, PET

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The new mobile generation is ready for a great leap forward based on Intel’s new Atom Z6xx microprocessor system and Freescale’s two-IC chipset that supports it.

These new ICs along with system power management designs will provide:

• Small size
• Low weight
• Low power requirements
• Long battery life
• Small overall system footprint
• Battery recharge capability
• Minimum operating temperature
• Reasonable cost for the specific application

One reason for recent improvements is that semiconductor processing now allows smaller feature sizes and more transistors and functions per IC. This means that it is possible for an IC to provide circuits to support microprocessor functions. Because of the power levels involved it is usually necessary to use a separate IC for the battery-based power supply.

Lower Power Processing

To enhance the growth of mobile computing, Intel Corporation unveiled its newest Atom™ processor-based platform. This technology package provides significantly lower power consumption and targets a broad range of computing devices, such as high-end smartphones, tablets and other mobile handheld products. As noted by Intel, “As a result of our efforts, the Atom processor is pushing the boundaries of higher performance at significantly lower power to show what’s possible as handheld devices become small, powerful mobile computers.”

The platform includes the Intel® Atom™ processor Z6xx Series Family and Platform Controller Hub MP20. This platform has been repartitioned to include the Intel Atom processor Z6xx, which combines the 45nm Intel Atom processor core with 3-D graphics, video encode and decode, as well as memory and display controllers into a single SoC design. It also includes the MP20 Platform Controller Hub, which supports a range of system-level functions and I/O blocks.

50% Less Power Use In Standby

Compared with the previous Atom platform, the Z6xx offers:

• Power reduction: 50x in standby, 0.5x in operation
• Performance: 2x graphics processing speed
• Footprint: 2x reduction in p.c. board area
Completing the mobile system design are Freescale’s support chips. They are part of Intel’s reference design and are supported with drivers and software from Intel and third party developers. Freescale supplies an efficient, highly integrated two-IC chipset for mobile device applications, as shown in Fig. 1. One IC is a buck-boost dc-dc regulator that provides 3.3V from a single cell Li-ion battery. The second, a power management IC provides:

• Battery charging and monitoring
• Audio processing/amplifiers
• LCD backlight and interface functions

By separating the 3.3V supply, you can easily adapt the system for 2/3 cell solutions by r eplacing the buck/boost with a buck regulator, which enables re-use levels between products. Also, separation of a high current 3.3V supply provides optimal thermal performance between devices within the system.

The SCCS900842/R2 power supply IC (Fig. 2) contains a fully integrated, four-switch, synchronous buck-boost dc-dc converter and a low noise, LDO. The IC operates from a single-cell Li-ion battery and steps up or down an input voltage that can range from 3.0 to 4.4V and provides a 3.3V fixed output. Also, it provides two pins to monitor the status of the IC; a digital status signal and an analog output voltage proportional to the average output current. The IC is housed in a 3x3 mm, PB-free, wafer level chip scale package (WLCSP) with a 0.4mm pitch.

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