In a worldwide agreement, Ericsson Power Modules has been granted a license on a patent portfolio for digital power technology (DPT) from Power-One. The non-exclusive license agreement provides Ericsson Power Modules with access to Power-One's portfolio of DPT patents for incorporation in Power Modules award winning series of 3E digitally controlled point-of-load devices.
Digital power management enables OEM's and data centers, including websites, to run more efficiently. As the number of point-of-load (POL) on boards continues to increase, and data centres utilize more power from the grid, the need for digital power management solutions intensifies. The use of digital control technology actually reduces cost while increasing performance, leading to the digital power market being one of the fastest growing markets in power management.
The internal design of Ericsson's 3E POL regulators uses digital power control techniques, and some of the optional user implementations of these products are able to benefit from the utilization of system level digital power and energy management approaches. While these products can be successfully applied using the same techniques as with conventional fully analog POL regulators, it is beneficial for customer to have access, through a PMBus interface, to critical information such as load condition, temperature, voltage and current delivered, and other parameters, making it possible to monitor the distributed energy down to processor level.
The addition of Power-One's digital power technology patents to the existing and future products will extend possibilities for customers to a broader range of operation and to fully program and monitor single, or an array of digitally controlled POL devices with functions such as sequencing, voltage setting, dynamic commands to shift-load and many others.
