In daily life, electronic devices have become an indispensable part of people. With the development of intelligence, the microcontroller is considered to be one of the most important chips. However, almost all electronic products are inseparable from the power supply.
Power management is a very important part of electronic product design. By reducing the power consumption of components when they are idle, a good power management system can extend battery life by two to three times. Power management chips play a central role in power management technology, therefore, power management chips with excellent performance will have a wide range of application value.
PMIC Application on Electric Vehicle
Power Management Integrated Circuits (PMIC) is a single chip that integrated multiple power rails and power management functions.
With the update and iterations of electronic technology, power technology tends to be high-efficiency, low-power, and intelligent. PMIC is the power supply center and link of all electronic equipment. It is often used in devices that use batteries as power sources, such as smartphones, digital cameras, etc. The system requires multiple power sources of different voltages to control the charging and discharging of batteries. For space-constrained devices such as wearable devices, IoT devices, etc., PMIC can meet their space optimization and high-efficiency requirements, and provide optimal power management.
Power Management ICs
As one of the power management semiconductors, a PMIC can have one or more functions, including voltage converters and regulators, battery chargers, battery fuel gauges, LED drivers, real-time clocks, power sequencers, and power control. Among them, the voltage regulation IC is the fastest growing and the largest part.
Power management systems convert DC/DC power into three different forms. Linear regulators can be fully integrated and offer voltage scalability, but are not very efficient. Capacitor-based switching regulators can be fully integrated and efficient, but do not support voltage scalability. Inductor-based switching regulators are highly efficient and allow for voltage scalability, but are generally not fully integrated.
Application of PMIC
Like MCU, PMIC is an indispensable electronic component for almost all kinds of equipment and has a wide range of applications, including LED lighting, general power, home appliances, and IoT.
LEDs are now widely used in general lighting, landscape lighting, automotive lighting, backlight applications, signals and indications, display screens, and other fields; and driver chips, as an indispensable core component of LEDs, control the linearity, power, and life of LEDs. and other key factors.
Universal power supplies are widely used in smartphones, tablet computers, notebook computers, new energy vehicles, and other fields.
The home appliance market mainly includes various household appliances, kitchen appliances, refrigerators, air conditioners, washing machines, TVs, etc.; multiple power management chips of different types are usually used in the same appliance.
In wearable IoT devices, PMICs can provide flexibility by enabling and disabling power blocks when necessary, while enabling protection, monitoring, and control functions.
Compared with consumer electronics and industrial applications, automotive applications have stricter technical requirements for power management ICs. The functions of automotive chips are complex, and they have higher requirements for performance, accuracy, quality, life, and the harshness of the use environment.
As new energy vehicles become a trend, PMIC is an indispensable core component. PMICs are used in everything from automotive powertrains, and in-vehicle electronics to advanced driver assistance systems.
Major Manufacturers of Power Management ICs
Power management ICs are an important part of analog ICs, accounting for over 40% of analog chips. At present, the competition pattern of the global analog IC market is becoming more and more concentrated, and the top ten companies mostly achieve technological complementarity and scale expansion through mergers and acquisitions.
Texas Instruments acquired National Semiconductor (NS) in 2011, further enriching the range of power management ICs and discrete power devices.
Onsemi completed the acquisition of Fairchild in 2016, gaining leading technology and expertise in traction inverters, onboard chargers, and electronic vehicle functions.
Infineon acquired International Rectifier (IR) in 2015
Renesas acquired Intersil in 2016 and IDT in 2019
Analog Devices Inc acquired Linear in 2016 and Maxim in 2020
NXP acquired Freescale in 2015
Microchip acquired Micrel and Atmel successively