Technology
Key Innovations:
- Auto-control: Unique automatic compensation, cycle-by-cycle
- Unique digital stress share for paralleling controllers (distribute heat/power instead of just the current) which can reduce board temperature by 10 Deg C (and increase equipment life time by 2X)
- Automatic synchronization of various controller clocks to reduce EMI and input filter requirements
- Non-volatile memory using fuse-based technology (OTP) instead of flash. This improves reliability and data retention, and allows higher temperature operation
- Data acquisition system (for monitoring various telemetry systems, such as current, temperature, voltage and power) using advanced calibration techniques and correction table
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With multiple patents filed, Powervation’s technologies include Auto-control - a unique digital control algorithm that runs on a proprietary system-on-a-chip platform. This includes an ultra-lean DSP and RISC processors, along with mixed-signal circuitry. Powervation’s innovative technologies ensure that the power system consistently operates at peak efficiency and reduces total system component counts by as much as 50 percent. This advantage cuts system costs and improves reliability. Powervation enables digital power management at no extra cost and can dramatically shorten power system design time— from weeks to days. |
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True Adaptive Control
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Powervation's Auto-control technology brings true adaptive control to DC-DC conversion for the first time. The benefits of Auto-control, such as improved robustness, maximum performance and ease of design are all made available through this technology. Real-time Auto-control™ removes the need for the designer to compensate the loop. Instead, the control loop is automatically compensated and optimizes regulation.
The main advantage of adaptive control is that power stage uncertainty is reduced by the parametric estimation. As the uncertainty in the control system is reduced it becomes more robust, and the limitations on control performance to achieve robustness are relaxed. As such, the loop can maintain high gain up to as high a bandwidth as stability will allow. By using adaptive control, high-gain margins and high-phase margins are not required to ensure loop stability. Therefore, higher performance control is possible.
Figure 2 illustrates the transient responses to load steps with various power stage L and C values with fixed control (a), and Powervation Auto-control ™ technology (b). The improved robustness is clear, with much smaller voltage deviation, as well as consistent responses despite varying components.
In addition to providing more precise control over a wider range of conditions, Powervation's techniques make it easier to implement energy-saving designs such as multi-phase systems. As depicted in Figure 3, the loop gain and bandwidth of a multi-phase DC-DC converter changes dramatically from 1-phase to 2-phase operation, and conventional non-adaptive controllers have a difficult time stabilizing the voltage.
By contrast, Figure 4 shows how the closed loop bandwidth remains constant with Powervation's Auto-control technology. This allows energy-efficient design techniques to be implemented in a way that fixed controllers or open-loop adaptive techniques cannot achieve.Powervation has developed the first true adaptive control for DC-DC conversion. Our Auto-control technology continuously tunes parameters during operation and deals easily with a wide range of power-stage variations and power-stage dynamics, such as those seen in power-saving modes. The benefits are substantial. They include greater voltage stability, faster transient response and unprecedented ease of design. |
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Power Management
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Powervation’s novel Digital Stress Share (DSS) scheme has the unique feature sets and is especially useful for modern power architectures where stress (electrical and thermal) need to be actively balanced between an arbitrary number of digitally controlled DC-DC switch-mode power converters (SMPCs).
The system employed four identical paralleled DC-DC converters (SMPC1-SMPC4) mounted on a system board, with a total rated system maximum output current of Iout=120A into a common load distributed across the system board. Impedances to the distributed loads were relatively mismatched in order to verify static and dynamic performance of the stress share algorithm. Fig. 1 shows static absolute current mismatch (defined as difference of POL output current from theoretically expected) over the full system load current 0-120A. Mismatches are predominantly by limitations in current sense accuracy in SMPC1-SMPC4.
DSS is master-less and quasi-democratic, eliminating all known drawbacks of analog current share lines, and offering significant improvements over competing digital current share methods. It features inter-device stress share communication with fully predictable timing, regardless of the number of SMPCs working in parallel. Data throughput as well as data storage requirements are minimized. Measurement results confirm excellent stress share performance under various operating conditions. The DSS scheme is versatile, robust, fault-tolerant and scalable. |
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The increasing convergence of Networking, Computing and Storage infrastructures means that power usage and performance is becoming more complex. Reliability is paramount, which makes telemetry [voltage, current, temperature] control and real-time monitoring mandatory. Moreover, meeting tight market windows means there’s no tolerance for design re-spins.
Powervation’s technology addresses the new complexities with an intelligent data acquisition system that provides the telemetry information needed to better understand load requirement and improve power allocation. Configuration: Static & Dynamic
Monitoring
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