Product category:
Analogue and Mixed Signal ICs
News Release from: Micrel | Subject: MIC280
Edited by the Electronicstalk Editorial
Team on 16 January 2002
Thermal supervisor shrinks to quarter
size
Micrel Semiconductor has developed a highly accurate, miniature two-zone thermal supervisor IC for thermal management using embedded thermal diodes.
Micrel Semiconductor has developed a highly accurate, miniature two-zone thermal supervisor IC for thermal management using embedded thermal diodes such as those found in CPUs from Intel and Advanced Micro Devices, Xilinx VIRTEX FPGAs, and other high performance devices Available in 6-pin SOT23 packaging, the MIC280 features highly accurate remote temperature measurement, six independent thresholds, I2C/SMBus compatibility, a programmable interrupt output, and numerous features to enhance ease of use and system reliability
This article was originally published on Electronicstalk on 6 Mar 2007 at 8.00am (UK)
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"The main goals in developing the MIC280 were to offer a thermal supervisor with superior real-world accuracy, high reliability, increased programmer friendliness, a smaller footprint and lower cost", said Jim Judkins, Product Marketing Manager.
"The MIC280 fits into about one-quarter the space of legacy thermal supervisor ICs and offers far more features and performance".
"In many applications such as portable computing and telecomms/datacomms racks, the thermal envelope is very tight", Judkins continued.
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"This has fuelled a drive toward more accurate thermal supervisors and led vendors to increase resolution and accuracy specifications.
Specified accuracy on the datasheet can be very misleading, however", Judkins explained further.
"Users quickly learn that electrical noise from a system's high-performance digital circuits overwhelms everything else and destroys the accuracy they thought they had paid for.
Micrel's proprietary A/D convertor, signal processing front-end and 'one-wire' diode interface give the MIC280 markedly superior noise performance in both laboratory and real-world testing.
This translates directly into higher system accuracy".
Fault queues and programmable digital filters, further enhance performance in noisy environments.
Locking of critical functions, a serial bus timeout, reporting of diode faults, and independent overtemperature alarms enhance system reliability.
Software ease-of-use features include the SMBus Alert Response Address protocol, programmable resolution, mask and status bits for all interrupt sources, software reset, and ID registers.
The MIC280's operating power supply current is a miserly 3mA, and the quiescent current in shutdown mode is only 5uA.
Eight different factory-programmed slave address options are available.
In 1000-piece quantities, the MIC280 in 6-pin SOT23 packaging is priced at $1.34 each.
Samples are from stock and an evaluation board is available.
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