How to power FPGAs with Digital Power Modules
Felix Martinez, Intersil Corporation
EDN (September 13, 2015)
The proliferation of voltage input rails for delivering point-of-load (POL) power to FPGAs is making power supply designs ever more challenging. As a result, encapsulated power modules are seeing increased use in telecom, cloud computing and industrial equipment because they operate as self-contained power management systems. They are easier to use than discrete solutions and speed time-to-market for both experienced and novice power-supply designers. Modules include all of the major components -- PWM controller, FETs, inductor and compensation circuitry -- with only the input capacitor and output capacitor needed to create an entire power supply.
This article discusses a FPGA reference design generator and walks you through the steps for selecting an FPGA, required power rails, backplane and digital power modules for POL. We will highlight a graphical user interface (GUI) that configures, validates and monitors the FPGA’s power supply architecture, and we will explain the GUI’s sequencing feature to power up the voltage rails, and select the power sequence order and rise and fall times.
To read the full article, click here
Related Semiconductor IP
- xSPI Multiple Bus Memory Controller
- MIPI CSI-2 IP
- PCIe Gen 7 Verification IP
- WIFI 2.4G/5G Low Power Wakeup Radio IP
- Radar IP
Related White Papers
- How Low Can You Go? Pushing the Limits of Transistors - Deep Low Voltage Enablement of Embedded Memories and Logic Libraries to Achieve Extreme Low Power
- BCD Technology: A Unified Approach to Analog, Digital, and Power Design
- How silicon and circuit optimizations help FPGAs offer lower size, power and cost in video bridging applications
- Design considerations for power sensitive embedded devices