Product category:
DC/DC Convertors
News Release from: Emerson Network Power - Embedded Power
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 01 April 2005
Digital power management protocol
released
Revision 1.0 of the PMBus open-standard digital power management protocol has been released and a special interest group has been formed to promote the standard.
Artesyn Technologies today announced the public release of Revision 1.0 of the PMBus open-standard digital power management protocol and the formal establishment of a special interest group (SIG) known as the System Management Interface Forum, charged with further developing, enabling and promoting the PMBus power operating system Pioneered by Artesyn and other power supply and semiconductor companies, the PMBus - or Power Management Bus - protocol initiative is a collaborative venture by the industry to establish the first truly open communications standard for the digital control of power systems
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 4 Feb 2000 at 8.00am (UK)
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In addition to Artesyn and Astec Power, the initial coalition comprised leading semiconductor manufacturers Intersil Corp, Microchip Technology, Texas Instruments, Volterra Semiconductor, Summit Microelectronics and Zilker Labs.
Since the coalition was first formed, most major power companies have endorsed the protocol and announced that they intend developing compliant standard products.
The establishment of the System Management Interface Forum as a formal SIG is a significant advancement in making the PMBus protocol available to a wide audience.
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The group set up a working committee known as the PMBus Implementers Forum, which has just released the first formal revision of the protocol specification available at the group's official web site: www.powerSIG.org.
A downloadable membership application form is also available on the website for new companies wishing to join.
Members can contribute to future specifications and revisions, and participate in working groups for related projects, if they choose to become PMBus adopters.
"We are extremely pleased that the PMBus initiative now has a formal organisation to support and accelerate continued PMBus development", said Todd Hendrix, VP Worldwide Marketing and Business Development with Artesyn and member of the board of directors for the newly minted SIG.
"This will accelerate the adoption of a standard protocol across a wide industry base, to the benefit of all OEM system designers, power supply and semiconductor manufacturers alike".
"Artesyn is a longstanding advocate of open architecture systems to help customers improve time to market and streamline costs by adopting standard platforms".
"We expect the first compliant semiconductors and digital POL convertors to hit the market during the summer".
According to Dave Heacock, co-chairman of the System Management Interface Forum and Vice President for Portable Power Management at Texas Instruments: "The PMBus protocol, implemented over the industry-standard SMBus serial interface, offers system developers an ideal route for digital control of power products in the near future".
The growing complexity of power systems control is changing the way power solutions operate.
To satisfy these requirements, the coming generation of power conversion solutions - including isolated bricks, nonisolated point-of-load (POL) convertors and eventually AC/DC power supplies - will be intelligent and offer the capability for programming and control, as well as real-time monitoring.
The protocol for communicating with these future convertors will be critical.
The PMBus digital protocol establishes an open, industry standard communication format to support these future products.
The PMBus digital protocol addresses the desire of OEM customers to have open standards that result in multi-sourced products.
OEM customers can continue to design their systems' power architectures using discrete components or turnkey convertor solutions.
However, once the new protocol is widely adopted, the OEM will be able to control all compliant convertors using the same set of commands.
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