Texas Instruments Announces License Agreement with Power-One

Texas Instruments Announced an agreement with Power-One to expand the market for TI's analog and digital power-management products that support the PMBus^™ protocol. The non-exclusive Field of Use license agreement for Power-One's digital power technology patents will benefit original equipment manufacturers that use TI's point-of-load controllers. The license also extends to TI power modules, but not to other merchant power supplies using TI controllers.

TI offers several power-management controllers that support PMBus, an open-standard digital power communications interface that allows the configuring, control and monitoring of power systems. For example, the four-output multi-phase UCD9240 and dual-output UCD9220 power-system controllers are fully configurable via an easy-to-use graphical user interface for monitoring, control and management for dc-dc point-of-load power conversion.

The PMBus standard specification, developed by a consortium of 40 power supply, telecommunications equipment and semiconductor providers, defines a digital communications protocol that enables power converters to be configured, monitored and maintained according to a set of more than 100 commands. PMBus provides increased reliability and system intelligence. Designers can set a power supply's operating parameters, monitor operation and perform corrective measures in response to faults or if the power shuts a system down.