January 27, 2014 — Micrel Korea (CEO Young-Jun Oh, www.micrel.com), an industry leader in high-performance linear and power solutions as well as LAN, timing, and communications solutions, has introduced the MIC21000, a true-digital PWM controller for high-current, non-isolated DC-DC power supplies for computing and telecom applications. Designed to work with external industry-standard DrMOS as well as Micrel's proprietary IntelliMOS® solution, the MIC21000 can be flexibly used as a building block for +12V and +5V step-down, high-current POL (Point-of-Load) power supplies.

Brian Hedayati, Vice President of Marketing for Micrel's High-Performance Linear and Power Solutions division, stated, "The MIC21000 is Micrel's first digital-controlled, intelligent DC-DC controller product family targeting cloud computing servers as well as computing and communications systems. Since these systems require continuous operation through fault tolerance, power designers must design power management solutions that can monitor the status of all operating voltages and respond to faults in real time. Additionally, because digitally-controlled power management products allow system designers to optimize designs through software changes, they can shorten design cycles. With this first digital controller product announcement, Micrel plans to introduce differentiated products targeting the cloud computing sector, which is growing faster than other computing fields."

The MIC21000 optimizes transient loading and steady-state performance, maximizes flexibility and stability, and meets designer requirements by integrating a digital control loop. The MIC21000's ultra-fast transient response capability reduces output capacitance and improves transient response by up to twice that of competing analog solutions through nonlinear control. A highly stable fuse-based on-board non-volatile memory (OTP NVM) and I2C™/PMBUS™ interface enable communication with a supervisory controller for monitoring and fault management as well as user configuration. This allows faster power subsystem development and debugging, thereby reducing time-to-market.

The I2C/PMBUS interface enables real-time monitoring of input voltage, output voltage/current, and internal/external temperature. The MIC21000 operates from a single 5V and 3.3V bias supply voltage and features complete power management functionality, eliminating the need for complex and costly IC sequencing and monitoring. The MIC21000 can be configured during development using Micrel's Digital Designer GUI (Graphical User Interface). The GUI provides a user-friendly interface for communications and configuration, and the device can also be reconfigured at runtime using PMBUS commands.

The MIC21000 operates over a temperature range of –40°C to +85°C and is supplied in a compact 24-pin 4mm x 4mm QFN package.