PWI spec charged for battery apps

National Semiconductor Corp. and ARM Holdings plc have released a second-generation PowerWise interface (PWI) specification that provides enhanced power-management interconnect capability to feature-rich, multidomain SoCs in battery-powered, handheld electronic devices.

The spec speeds deployment of advanced power-management solutions through an open, industry-wide standard for interconnecting digital SoCs and power-management integrated circuits (PMICs).

National Semiconductor and ARM collaborated with such adopters as Matsushita Electric Industrial, Philips Semiconductors, Samsung Electronics and STMicroelectronics on the interface specification.

With more functions embedded into battery-powered devices such as cellphones, handheld gaming consoles and portable media players, the complexity of digital SoC architectures has increased significantly since the spec's release two years ago.

"The PWI 2.0 standard enables simple two-wire implementation of advanced power-management technologies such as adaptive voltage scaling and back biasing in multidomain architectures," said Ravindra Ambatipudi, director of advanced power products at National Semiconductor in a statement. "PWI 2.0 technology enables device manufacturers to offer new processor-intensive features such as digital multimedia processing and broadcasting with improved battery life while maintaining supply-chain flexibility."

The two-year-old PWI specification defines a two-wire serial bus connecting SoCs with PMICs. The interface is specifically defined to provide master-to-slave communication, optimized for control of a voltage regulation system that enables system designers to dynamically adjust the supply and back-bias voltages on digital processors.

Available now, the PWI 2.0 specification is royalty- and license-free.

Spencer Chin
EE Times