Linear Technology's latest power supply monitor will provide digital management of up to eight 0V to 6V power supplies.

Providing digital control of analogue power supplies, such as adjustment of output voltages and precise protection, monitoring and diagnostic mechanisms, the LTC2978’s PMBus compliant interface provides access to an on-board EEPROM holding supply configuration, fault response and logging capabilities. 

An integrated 15-bit ADC and 9:1 ADC MUX allows the IC to monitor and servo eight output channels and one input channel.  The primary PMBus operations include sequencing the startup of supplies, adjusting point-of-load voltages using voltage-buffered 10-bit current output digital-to-analogue converters (IDACs), margining voltages to programmed limits and supervising output voltages, as well as the LTC2978’s die temperature, for overvalue or undervalue conditions. 

The configuration settings of these operations are all user-programmable and can be stored in EEPROM along with any faults, allowing for discontinuous system use.  A programmable watchdog timer is also provided to supervise an external microcontroller, FPGA or ASIC.  For applications that monitor more than eight supplies, the LTC2978 can be cascaded using only two connections.

The LTC2978 is available in a 64-lead 9x9mm QFN package that is RoHS compliant, and is specified over the commercial and industrial temperature ranges.