Date: 13/06/2012

Programmable power manager device from Lattice for solid state drives

Lattice Semiconductor Corporation has announced power management solutions that simplifies and increases the reliability of power failure protection circuitry in Solid State Drives (SSD). Data loss is prevented by the power failure protection circuitry in the event of input power failure by using the on-board hold-up capacitor to provide supplemental power during that critical period when the data is fully saved into the Flash memory. A super capacitor or a tantalum capacitor bank along with a voltage boost converter is traditionally used by these circuits to store the energy.

The Lattice Power Manager II device simplifies the power failure protection circuitry by integrating the charging and power switchover circuit of the hold-up capacitor. It eliminates the need of a voltage boost converter in tantalum hold-up capacitor applications.

"The power failure circuitry implemented using our Power Manager II devices can be used across a wide range of solid state drive architectures," said Shakeel Peera, senior director of strategic marketing for Lattice Semiconductor. "These power management ICs can greatly lower system cost and free up board space by reducing the hold-up capacitor size."

Lattice's Power Manager II devices enable the integration of super capacitor or tantalum capacitor charging and switchover, hot swap control, power fail interrupt and sequencing. The Power Manager's precision voltage monitoring (0.7% accuracy), fast response (48 microseconds) and on-chip CPLD improves the reliability of the power failure protection circuitry in an SSD.

For additional information: www.latticesemi.com/SSDPOWER
Designs for the Power Manager II devices are implemented using the Lattice PAC-Designer design software tools that are available for download free of charge at www.latticesemi.com/pac-designer