Power '96 focuses on semi solutions

Electronic News, Oct 14, 1996

Santa Clara, Calif.--For decades, users of battery-operated devices have been clamoring for longer usage time--an area where, according to OEMs participating in the Power '96 conference here this week, there may finally be some significant progress.

The problem is being attacked from various angles on the microcontroller front. Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), for example, will use the conference to unveil its most recent microprocessor entrant in the embedded market--the Elan SC400. Meanwhile, Motorola plans to debut a product called the Battery Fast Charge Controller, a chip which is designed for fast charging of nickel cadmium (NiCd) and nickel metal hydride (NiMH) batteries using negative slope voltage detection.

Phoenix Technologies' Pico Group will simultaneously announce a number of software foundations designed to enable systems using the AMD Elan SC400 platform. These foundations include: software support for BIOS and power control, PCMCIA, flash and high-speed infrared. Phoenix is also set to announce that Seiko Instruments has licensed Pico software foundations for use in a new hand-held design based on the Elan SC400.

AMD will on Tuesday introduce the Elan SC400 microcontroller based on the company's low-voltage Am486 MPU core. The device will be offered in 33MHz and 66MHz operating frequency versions and will be manufactured on AMD's 0.35 micron process, drawing one-fourth the power of earlier 0.8 micron technology. It is the third member of the Elan MCU family, joining the earlier introduced Elan SC300 and SC310--a lower voltage version of the SC300.

AMD sources said there will definitely be an Elan SC410 in the future, most likely manufactured on 0.25 micron process. In addition, AMD has buried IC capabilities in the controller. The company will not actively promote the capability though because licensing issues with Philips Semiconductor--originator of IC--remain to be resolved.

In an interview, Ed White, AMD's technical marketing/product manager, Embedded Processor Division, said the company's goal is to continue to reduce power draw in its embedded processor line until it enables a 10-hour battery life minimum in portable computing systems, and a week's worth of activity on a portable computer as a longer-term goal.

He added that as future versions of the Elan family emerge, lower voltage will be key to reducing power draw. "The SC400 runs at 3.3 volts but AMD is committed to moving quickly to 2.7 volts,"

The SC400 differs from the earlier Elan controllers in that it offers 8 kilobytes of write-back cache memory. Because it is based on a 486 core, it offers 16- and 32-bit data bus compared to 16-bit with the earlier 386-based SC300/310. In addition, the number of ROM chip selects has been increased from two to three and the device's on-chip memory controller has four banks compared with two for the SC300/310.

The Elan SC400 is sampling now in 292-pin BGA package with the 33MHz version priced at $39 per unit, while the 66MHz version is priced at $44 each, both in quantities of 25,000 units.

Motorola, meanwhile, will offer the MC33340 Battery Fast Charge Controller which the company claims ensures accurate charge termination by an output that momentarily interrupts the charge current for precise voltage sampling. The IC is said by the company to also support secondary charge termination methods of either programmable time or temperature limits.

The MC33340 battery charger IC is available in 8-lead surface mount and through-hole DIP packages and has an operating range of 3V to 18V. Pricing in both packages is $1.63 each in quantities of 10,000 units. Samples are available now with production quantities having a six-to-eight week lead time.

The fourth Power conference is co-sponsored by Arthur D. Little Inc. and Giga Information Group. In an interview with Electronic News, Daniel C. Merriman, director at Giga Information discussed some of the wireless market segment drivers. "Batteries are a critical enabling technology when you aren't near a power plug, and users have an increasingly insatiable thirst for power. Various companies are responding by improving their technology. That's going to enable the whole portable computing market to grow.