Smart controllers make battery powered devices tougher, says ST

Such devices include e-readers, tablets, media players, smartphones and digital cameras. The new chips have been designed to enable next generation mobile products to offer easy-to-use power-up, power-down and unfreeze/reset functions and to prevent damage to the end user product. According to ST, the single-chip turn-key solutions 'significantly ease' the design task for a number of mobile and portable consumer manufacturers and enable the replacement of 'tens' of discrete electronic components in product designs. The STM6600 and STM6601 chips are designed to offer protection for battery-operated devices in a number of ways. These include minimising the risk of powering up without sufficient battery energy to complete the sequence, which can damage the system. To prevent this, the chip blocks power-up if the battery is excessively discharged and can also prevent power-up if it detects a fault in the power supply. The IC connects directly to the power button and another Smart Reset input can be connect to any other pushbutton in the system. It contains circuitry to prevent external interference such as ESD from causing unwanted power-up or system-reset. ST claims that the protection features integrated in the STM660x devices replace as many as 30 or 40 discrete components or a complex programmable logic device with a separate voltage regulator, clock and a voltage detector to determine the battery condition. Alternatively, adds the semiconductor specialist, a microcontroller with dedicated housekeeping features could be used, but this too requires an external crystal, a voltage detector and must also be programmed.