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Power Management Solutions
Actel SmartFusion™ intelligent mixed signal FPGAs delivers unprecedented integration by combining an ARM® Cortex™-M3 microprocessor, Actel's proven flash-based FPGA fabric, on-chip nonvolatile flash memory, on-chip analog-to-digital resources, and integrated on-chip i/o including on-chip Ethernet MAC, in single low power device.
Leveraging these capabilities, Actel's Mixed Signal Power Manager (MPM) reference design demonstrates configurable power management in SmartFusion family of Intelligent Mixed-signal FPGAs.
The MPM design leverages Actel's ground breaking SmartFusion mixed signal FPGA technology to deliver power monitoring, power sequencing, closed-loop trimming, event and data logging, power-up and power-down control of up to 32 external power supplies. Designers do not need to deal with FPGA design design tools to configure power management sequencing, levels, or thresholds; the MPM design is programmed and configured through an easy-to-use standalone graphical user interface. The GUI enables users to configure power management for up to 32 external power supplies and drive output signals as the monitored voltages meet or deviate from user-programmed operating limits, all without opening Actel's Libero® Integrated Design Environment (IDE)). MPM reduces total parts count at the board level, increases system reliability by eliminating single points of failure, and delivers highly configurable, integrated power management using the highly-reliable, flash-based Actel family of SmartFusion FPGAs.
Within the MPM GUI, users can configure all MPM input and output requirements by writing values to the SmartFusion device's nonvolatile memory (NVM) via the joint test action group (JTAG) interface or via I2C interface, defining and setting all threshold flag levels, output signals, power sequencing, and debug level settings for MPM power management operation. These settings can be quickly altered and reloaded from the GUI, allowing rapid validation in functional hardware of all selections, settings, and sequencing. All digital flag outputs are also definable via the GUI, allowing monitoring of any condition or state for external use on the board.
MPM functionality is demonstrated using a SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGAs, MPM is demonstrated using the SmartFusion Evaluation Kit or SmartFusion Development Kit connected to the MPM daughter card.
The four regulators function as independent power supplies controlled by the MPM. Additional regulator control channels and digital I/Os can be wired by the user via the mixed-signal headers connections.
Key Benefits
- Intelligent power management leveraging 32-bit ARM Cortex-M3 in SmartFusion intelligent mixed signal FPGA
- Configurable power management in a low-power, high-reliability, flash-based Fusion mixed signal FPGA
- In-system reprogrammable via JTAG or I2C
- Implements complex power management into hardware
- More features and channels than current ASSP solutions
- Nonvolatile
- Live at power-up
- Low power
- Single-chip and low-power products simplify board design
- Low power FPGAs reduce thermal management and cooling needs
- Proven in hardware
- Demonstration available using Fusion Advanced Development Kit
The MPM GUI Power tab sets over and under volt thresholds, nominal and hysteresis voltages, filtering settings, slot assignments to one of the 32 available time slots, and independent delay assignments for power-up and power-down.
The Output tab of the MPM GUI defines conditional digital outputs, enabling complex state driven flagging. This can be used for a variety of external logic applications, from daisy-chain sequencing between multiple devices to external alarms, driven by any set of combinatorial conditions of multiple monitored power regulators defined thorough the GUI.
Sequencing is clearly illustrated in the MPM GUI Graph tab, showing a schematic real-time view of monitored power regulator power-up and power-down.
Controls and resources used on the MPM daughter card are shown below.
MPM Block Diagrams
For SmartFusion-related documents, visit the SmartFusion Documentation page.
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