Industry’s first fully-encapsulated 50A digital power module

Announced the industry’s first 50A fully-encapsulated digital DC-DC PMBus power module, the ISL8272M has been unveiled by Intersil. The device is a complete step-down power supply that delivers up to 50A of output current from industry standard 12V or 5V input power rails, and four modules can be combined to support up to 200A rails.

The device provides point-of load conversions for advanced FPGAs, ASICs, processors and memory in space-constrained and power-dense telecom and datacom applications. The device is also well suited for high-end instrumentation, industrial and medical equipment. Used in conjunction with Intersil’s PowerNavigator graphical user interface (GUI), the ISL8272M simplifies system power conversion and configuration, while speeding design time.

The complexity and performance of the latest FPGAs and processors used in wired, wireless and cloud computing systems is driving up the number of voltage rails. For example, some optical transmission systems have as many as 60 power supplies on a single board. This complexity requires a higher level of system intelligence and advanced digital power management, including telemetry and system monitoring, to ensure 99.999% uptime. There are real economic impacts when a telecom system or a router goes down. For example, online purchases from Internet retailers can be lost during transmission, making uptime critical.

The ISL8272M’s digital control technology provides precise sequencing and system monitoring through the PMBus interface. The innovative ChargeMode control architecture enables compensation-free design that keeps the device stable regardless of output capacitor changes due to temperature, variation or aging. Competitive voltage-mode control power modules often require designers to perform complex calculations, stability analysis and build a compensation network using 4-5 discrete components. The ISL8272M’s ChargeMode control loop also provides a single clock cycle fast transient response to output current load steps common in FPGAs and DSPs processing power bursts, says the company.

Mark Downing, senior vice president of infrastructure and industrial power products, Intersil, said: “Cloud computing’s high availability demands are requiring systems to control and monitor every power rail to maximize efficiency and reduce downtime. The highly integrated ISL8272M offers our customers a higher current, intelligent digital power module solution that monitors and controls power supply voltages, currents, temperatures and fault status, while dynamically optimizing system power efficiency on the fly.”

The 50A ISL8272M relies on Intersil’s proven, fourth generation digital controller family and expands on the existing 25A ISL8270M and 33A ISL8271M digital power modules, giving users an easy migration path to higher current power rails. Additionally, the family of fully-encapsulated power modules is compatible with all industry pick and place equipment for full manufacturing automation.