Temperature sensors for mobile and desktop PCs

Computer designers face unrelenting pressure to shrink systems and curb costs without sacrificing performance.

Computer designers face unrelenting pressure to shrink systems and curb costs without sacrificing performance.

SMSC's introduction of several new sensor devices demonstrates not only its understanding of the pressure its customers face, but its willingness to follow suit and reduce size and cost wherever possible, while meeting or exceeding performance requirements.

Bringing its systems-design expertise to bear, SMSC has designed the EMC1200-series family of temperature sensors to communicate with SMSC's KBC11xx keyboard controller family over a single-wire SMSC BudgetBus sensor interface.

The BudgetBus architecture leverages the host controller to reduce overhead of the sensors, resulting in smaller size and lower costs.

SMSC's BudgetBus architecture also enables SMSC Sentinel Alert' technology to provide a hardware response to critical thermal conditions such as unresponsive system execution or excessive temperatures.

In addition, the single-wire interface simplifies routing.

"Computer designers are under constant pressure to reduce cost and size, while maintaining or increasing functionality", said Mark Beadle, Director of Product Marketing - Computing Platform Solutions at SMSC.

"In addition, advanced manufacturing process technology can complicate system behaviour in critical areas such as temperature".

"In leveraging our analogue expertise, and staying close to our customers to understand the most important challenges they wrestle with, we are able to develop technology that meets their needs across all fronts: size, cost and accuracy of temperature sensing".

The EMC1200-series of temperature sensors, designed for mobile and desktop computers, meet or beat industry performance standards with an external temperature accuracy rate of +/-1C and an ambient temperature accuracy rate of +/-3C.

The family comprises the EMC1201 ambient temperature sensor; the EMC1202 dual-temperature sensor, which employs a 50% smaller footprint than equivalent dual SMBus sensor devices, resulting in lower size and cost; the EMC1203 triple-temperature sensor, one of very few triple sensors to be offered in an 8-pin package; the EMC1204 quad-temperature sensor, which is the only quad sensor device in an 8-pin package, resulting in smaller size and requiring less routing; and the EMC1212 dual-temperature sensor designed for accurate temperature sensing of the latest generation processors and employing a 50% smaller footprint than equivalent dual sensor devices, resulting in lower size and cost.

In addition to the EMC1200 series BudgetBus sensors, SMSC is also introducing the EMC1043 and the EMC1053 - two sensors that employ technology innovations that include beta compensation and 'hottest of two zones' capability.

The EMC1043 is a triple-temperature sensor ideal for dual-core servers utilising SMBus architecture.

It comes in five versions, all of which employ beta compensation to enable accurate sensing of 65nm processors.

Beta compensation technology adjusts for inconsistent behaviour typically seen in substrate diodes at 65nm and in advanced processor geometries.

The first four versions, the EMC1043-1, 2, 3 and 4, represent different addresses.

The EMC1043-5 is a perfect choice for desktop applications, dedicating one set of its remote sensing pins to advanced processors by employing beta compensation and withholding beta compensation from the other remote sensor, allowing accurate sensing of non-processor devices.

The EMC1053 is a triple-temperature SMBus sensor that provides general-purpose measurement, and is ideal for embedded applications that employ technology without advanced processor geometries such as white goods.

In addition, the device features the ability to monitor three temperatures in a footprint traditionally used to measure only two.

Both the EMC1043 and EMC1053 employ the 'hottest of two zones' technology, which is unique in the industry, and allows designers to configure the device in such a way as to determine the hottest of the external zones measured, offloading from the 'host' processor the burden of comparing temperatures and identifying the hottest source.

Instead of polling two temperature registers and deciding which is hotter the processor only reads one temperature register representing the hotter of the two external temperatures.

Back to top