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Power Management Solutions
Actel Fusion® mixed-signal FPGAs enable power management, including power-up sequencing, runtime power monitoring, and power-down control. Actel's Mixed-signal Power Manager (MPM) reference design demonstrates configurable power management in Fusion devices as small as the AFS090.
The MPM demonstrator, including the MPM graphic user interface (GUI), is available now for use with the Fusion Advanced Development Kit.
The MPM demonstrator design leverages Actel's ground breaking Fusion mixed-signal FPGA technology to deliver superior power monitoring, power sequencing, closed-loop trimming, and power-up and power-down control of up to 16 external power supplies. Designers do not need to deal with FPGA design tools to configure power management sequencing, levels, or thresholds; the MPM design is programmed into the Fusion device through an easy-to-use standalone graphical user interface . The GUI enables users to configure power management for up to 16 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 Fusion mixed-signal FPGAs.
Within the MPM GUI, users can configure all MPM input and output requirements by writing values to the Fusion device's nonvolatile memory (NVM), using a low-cost programming stick (LCPS) via the joint test action group (JTAG) interface, and 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 four regulators on the Fusion Advanced Development Kit board; these four regulators function as independent power supplies controlled by the MPM. Additional regulator control channels and digital I/O can be accessed using on-board mixed signal or digital headers.
Key Benefits
- Configurable power management in a low-power, high-reliability, flash-based Fusion mixed-signal FPGA
- MPM reference design for Actel Fusion mixed-signal FPGA
- In-system re-programmable
- Implements complex power management into hardware
- More features than current ASSP solutions
- Exploits Actel true flash key advantages
- 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 16 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.
The MPM demonstrator design on the Fusion Advanced Development Kit board uses the resources, controls, and interfaces shown below:
MPM Block Diagram
