Four Development Trends for Power Management IC

With the growingly large screen of mobile terminal, increased function, battery should extend its life and lower power consumption and heat as soon as possible.

 

For currently mobile devices, the previous 500 mA is not enough. The charging current of cellphone has come to 1A; tablet even moves toward 2A. In the 2013 IC China, Yu-tai Technology introduced the industry’s first switching charging chip-ETA6003 with charging current reaching 3A. This product features intelligent dynamic path management, enabling intelligent devices of full-load operation after connecting charger; and of normal operation after the battery run out when in charging.

 

Comparing with conventional linear switch, the changeover switch can save at least 50% of the charging time, and largely reduce the overall heat and power consumption, providing better user experience, said the general manager of Yu-tai Technology, Gan Ge.

 

After Cortex-A9 becomes the standard supporting equipment of 2012 mid to high-end handset chip, Cortex-A15 architecture will naturally be the necessary fitting of high-end cellphone in 2013. As a result, Cortex-A15 processor-based battery-powered applications also begin to be available.

 

Recently, TI, on the basis of battery-powered application of Cortex-A9 and Cortex-A15 processor, introduced the industry-wide first single-chip front-end power management unit-TPS65090. TI said the product highly integrated a 4A switching PowerPath charger, three 5A DC-DC buck converters, 7 load switches, two LDOs and a 10-channel analog-to-digital converter (ADC). Compared with discrete IC, TPS65090 can reduce board space by 60%. In addition, TPS65090 can maximize power efficiency, and extend the battery life of electronic products by 20%.

 

As mobile terminal mounting adopts multi-core processor and posts increasingly high requirement for power consumption, ETA Solutions also developed smart power management chip- ETA1459 for the multi-core platform. With smart regulation, the product enables system to meet the full-load application environment, and achieve energy saving through the dynamic adjustment of the output voltage.

 

In addition to demand brought by charging current increase and multi-core, integration is another significant trend for the development of semiconductor product, which will goes for power management chip as well. The most obvious example is PMU product. A PMU integrates multiple LDO and DC-DC, enabling to achieve various kinds of power management.

 

With the increasing integration of mobile terminal main chip, designers tend to choose integrate-multiple-functions main chipset and MPC to help simplify design. But this does not mean no development prospect for discrete devices.

 

“Why do many customers choose PMU? The reason is that many functions are not available of single equipment, the disadvantage of each discrete device.” Gan Ge believed. Integration can not solve all problems; a PMU usually has access to some application, even one product, similar to ASSP (Application Specific Standard Products) from a certain point of view. Its extended application does worse than discrete solutions that can apt for the most suitable power management chip on the basis of demand, to reach the best energy efficiency. Due to the different advantage, integration and discrete solutions will coexist for long time.

 

In addition, PMU shows shortcomings of high cost and bad flexibility. For many customers, once getting access to one kind of PMU, they will blend with the suppliers. “Indeed, discrete device is not bad. If manufacturers can succeed in lower cost and higher flexibility, customers will prefer discrete devices for the Second sources and better advantage in bargaining,” said Wei Yong. For many years, there is no basic change in the topologies of power management AC-DC or AC-DC, the integration of which is usually done through technology or the increase of DIE SIZE; this kind of single chip shows no advantage in cost.

 

From the market share of global power management IC, Europe and the US-based companies still hold large technical and market advantages, but Taiwan region and Chinese mainland are catching up. Generally speaking, the advantages of European and American enterprises are technology, management and experience; while service and technical support as well as lower price for Chinese suppliers.

 

When a product maintains lucrative, system manufacturers may not have access to Chinese suppliers; but if the product’s technique moves mature, and sees profit dropping, system makers need to Cost down, generating opportunity for Chinese enterprises.

 

Due to the increasing high technology maturity of power management IC, the differentiation of many products is not very significant, which causes difficulty for Fabless; so the manufacturers with manufacturing capacity will own the advantage and remain 20%-30% of margin.