Digital power management: Changing the value ecosystem

On the Performance range, the spectrum will be subdivided in various flavors of digital, from low cost simple and robust state machine with on chip NVM, to sophisticated DSP based ones and analog (Figure 2).

Figure 1: Cost-Value-Performance: Dollars vs. volume

Figure 2: Digital flavors and analog continuum

he real customer is no longer only the design engineer, but all others who would benefit from this enabling technology: purchasing, test engineers, QA, manufacturing, warranty/repair (Figure 3). So the value proposition is expanding from strictly satisfying a technical/parts cost requirement to enabling energy savings, reducing life cycle cost (ownership + disposal) and you name it. "You name it" is the job of non technical folks who up to no long ago had no saying in the creation of a product.

And why not invite the marketing guys at the table and become part of your customer's value proposition. Power management functions at system level can be a significant differentiator. Make known the possibilities [17], like energy saving modes, reporting, remote monitoring, and testing [26].

Figure 3: Value Chain