Powering the Atom

PMIC integrates power management and clock driver functions

September 20, 2010—At the Intel Developer’s Forum (IDF) last week Intel rolled out its lowest-powered latest Atom processor to date. The re-architected Atom uses a combination of smaller line geometry, high-K metal gates and every power management trick in the book to achieve Atom’s lowest active and standby  power to date. At the same time Intel introduced a companion I/O controller chip the Atom E6xx series. Dialog Semiconductor picked up the gauntlet and introduced a companion power management IC (PMIC) for the new Atom.

The DA6011 manages the complete start-up, state-transitioning and power-down procedures on Intel Atom processor E6xx series-based platforms. It operates autonomously and reduces the overall system power consumption when going into stand-by or power down mode. The flexible state-machine implementation is designed to control the Intel Atom processor E6xx series platforms and I/O hubs from Intel (Intel Platform Controller Hub EG20T), OKI Semiconductor (ML7223 / ML7213) and ST Microelectronics (ConneXt STA2X11).

Juergen Friedel, vice president and general manager at Dialog said: “The new Intel Atom processor will stimulate a new wave of innovation through its performance, I/O flexibility and function integration. Our second generation DA6011 companion IC together with the Intel® Atom™ processor E6xx series is ideally suited to the demands of embedded applications, like automotive infotainment systems, industrial automation, embedded PCs and IP media phones, and also portable devices.”

The device integrates six DC-DC buck converters. This includes two IMVP-6 compatible buck converters dedicated to the Intel Atom processor E6xx series and three pass devices for a fully featured system with the lowest possible BOM.

Further platform power demands are supplied by 11 high performance, low dropout (LDO) voltage regulators, which use Dialog’s patented Smart Mirror™ technology, removing the need for a low power mode and simplifying power control in the system. A dedicated push-pull source/sink terminates the address lines of the external RAM, further minimising external components.

To manage the clock supplies four fractional division featured PLLs, two with spread spectrum capability, are included on the DA6011. The PLLs provide the clocks to the Intel Atom processor E6xx series as well as to the selected I/O hub, further shrinking the component count. The reference clock for the PLLs is generated via a 14.31818MHz crystal oscillator.

Two analogue inputs can be multiplexed to a 10-bit ADC converter for signal measurements. An autonomous state machine manages the complete system start-up and shutdown procedures as well as the state transitions of the Intel Atom processor during all operational modes.

Designed with AEC-Q100 specifications in mind, the device operates at -40-+85oC to meet industrial and automotive temperature ranges.

Engineering samples of the 11x11mm 169 VFBGA are already available with volume production parts for automotive applications available in Q1 2011.