Santa Clara, Calif. — National Semiconductor Corp. claims the industry’s first system monitoring, protection and control integrated circuit (IC) with on-chip power management bus (PMBus) support. Launched at the Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC), the LM25066 provides designers of blade servers, storage networking systems, routers/switches and modular subsystems with a solution that improves system reliability and reduces operating expenses in data centers, says National Semi.
The LM25066 integrates high-performance monitoring, protection and control blocks that precisely control and manage the electrical operating conditions of each blade in the chassis. It also provides accurate monitoring of critical system power consumption and fault conditions.
The LM25066 continuously supplies the system management host with real-time power, voltage, current, temperature and fault data for each blade subsystem. The system management bus (SMBus) communications interface delivers this data using the PMBus protocol. In addition, the host’s system diagnostic and optimization routines use the data to increase system reliability and minimize the data center’s total power consumption, says National.
The LM25066 features a voltage input range of 2.9 V to 17 V and a selectable 25 mV/50 mV current limit threshold for addressing a wide range of intermediate bus voltages and load currents. The monitoring block measures both current and voltage at 1,000 times per second with a current measurement accuracy of three percent over the full temperature range of -40 degrees C to 125 degrees C.
The simultaneous sampling of current and voltage provides a true power measurement of the server blade power consumption, says National. The monitoring block also captures the peak current and peak power and computes the average of subsystem operating parameters (Vin, Iin, Pin and Vout).
A temperature monitoring block on the LM25066 interfaces with a low-cost external diode for monitoring the temperature of the external MOSFET or other critical temperature source. The LM25066 reports the status of all system parameters and fault conditions through the SMBus interface and offers individually programmable warning thresholds for all faults.
The LM25066 control and protection blocks include National’s unique hot-swap architecture that provides both current and power limiting to protect sensitive circuitry during insertion of boards from a live system backplane or any other “hot” power source. It also provides adjustable under/overvoltage and hysteresis.
National supports the LM25066 with a suite of development tools that simplify application design and system verification. System designers may also use these tools to create value-added features for their subsystems, says National.
National’s power management experts will demonstrate the LM25066 at National’s booth #332/334 at APEC in Palm Springs, Calif.
Availability: Sampling now with full production volumes expected in the second quarter of 2010.
Pricing: The LM25066 (4 x 5 mm, 24-lead LLP package) is priced at $5.95 each in quantities of 1,000.