Development kit makes good on digital design

Silicon Laboratories' development kit for its Si825x family of digital power controllers is a complete hardware and firmware development system that eliminates user-written software for implementing digital power supplies. The tool is designed to dramatically shorten the digital power learning curve for analog designers.

"The industry-leading integration, performance and flexibility of the Si825x make it ideal for high-performance power supplies in communications systems, computers, servers and industrial and medical equipment," said Don Alfano, director of power products. "The Si8250DK development kit was created to enable analog power designers using the Si825x digital controllers to quickly become proficient in digital power supply design."

The Si825x family of digital power supply controllers are designed to offer the fast response of an ASIC solution and the flexibility of a flash-memory-based processor. Its architecture delivers both digital power control and management functions while consuming one-tenth the space and drawing less than 15 percent of the supply current of typical DSP solutions, according to the company.

The Si8250DK includes a source-level, real-time kernel that supplies key system software functions including power supply initialization, soft-start, fault detection and recovery, PMBus management, and shutdown. The kit includes GUI-based Application Builder software that enables the user to design and verify system switch timing, loop compensation and configuration without writing application software. Also included is an integrated development environment (IDE) consisting of an editor, macro assembler, demo C compiler and a special on-line debugger that allows the user to manually adjust system parameters such as loop compensation during power supply operation.

The Si8250DK development kit includes the Si8250 target board featuring an isolated half-bridge current doubler rectifier, USB to SMBus bridge board , USB debug adapter and USB cable, two 9V, 1.5A universal power supplies, and the IDE and product information CD-ROM that includes the Keil 8051 development tools (macro assembler, linker, evaluation C compiler). The kit also provides source code examples and register definition files, the Si825x kernel, a waveform builder and compensator design tools, PMBus monitor software, and documentation.

The Si8250DK is available for $199 and can be purchased online. A video demonstration of the tool kit is also available.

- Vince Biancomano

eeProductCenter