Digital power modules offer high power density and efficiency

Renesas Electronics Corporation has a new family of encapsulated digital DC-DC PMBus power modules. The five RAA210xxx simple digital power modules provide advanced digital telemetry and performance and are as easy to use as the company's analog power modules. They are complete step-down regulated power supplies that provide 25A, 33A, dual 25A, 50A, and 70A of output current while running from industry-standard 12V or 5V input power rails. The family provides POL conversion for advanced FPGAs, DSPs, ASICs and memory used in servers, storage, optical networking, and telecom equipment. Each device integrates a PWM controller, MOSFETs, inductor and passives inside a thermally optimised, HDA encapsulated module. All that is needed to complete the power supply are input and output bulk capacitors. The device is a lower cost, simplified digital power module family that is pin-to-pin compatible with the company's full-featured digital ISL827xM series. The Rsimple digital power modules offer run-time digital programmability to support configuration changes with a subset of PMBus commands, and full telemetry and system monitoring. If more advanced digital control is later required, upgrading to the pin-compatible ISL827xM modules will enable current sharing with multiple modules connected in parallel, access to all PMBus commands using the PowerNavigator tool, and non-volatile memory for configuration storage. “Our simple digital power modules accelerate time to market for design teams that want an easier-to-use, lower-cost digital power solution,” said Philip Chesley, vice president of Industrial Analog and Power Business Division, Renesas Electronics Corporation. “The RAA210xxx simple digital power products continue Renesas’ leadership in power density, high efficiency and fast transient performance to support demanding multi-rail POL requirements.”