"If you were to hire household staff to cook, clean, drive, stoke the fire and answer the door, can you imagine suggesting that they not talk to each other, not see what each other is doing, not coordinate their functions?" writes Nicholas Negroponte in his book Being Digital.

Yet the majority of on-board power converters do just that and can only operate independently, without any communication links with one another. Without the availability of a fully integrated communication and system control, managing the rapidly proliferating numbers and types of power devices has become increasingly difficult. To compound this problem, as more power management was needed to control the increasing number of voltages, integrating with analog technology became impossible.

For its part, Power-One invested nearly $50 million during one of the worst business cycles in history. The introduction of the Z-One digital IBA architecture was revolutionary in its integration of power management and conversion and also in the utilization of a fabless semiconductor business model.

Development of the architecture was accomplished by melding our 30 years of power conversion experience with the best silicon talent in the industry in a "stealth" R&D silicon design center. The success of this new group was measured by the successful development of a wealth of intellectual property, including proprietary integrated circuits, firmware, software, communications protocols and an advanced bus structure.

The work resulted in an elegantly simple approach that required only two component part numbers be inventoried by a customer. A Digital Power Manager provided the capability of interfacing with the customer's system and controlling up to 32 individual Z-POL converters. A single Z-POL converter part number, incorporating a digitally controlled regulator, could be programmed, through a graphical user interface, to provide any voltage required on the customer's circuit board.

Significant advantages abounded. Design cycle time was reduced from two weeks to one day for simple systems, and from eight weeks to two or three days for complex systems. In a system with eight output voltages, depending on currents and overall configuration, there could be a reduction from 200 components to nine, even as the number of traces was reduced from 600 to 80. Cost reductions of 20 percent or more were realized with virtually an unlimited combination of added power functions.

The shift from analog to digital power conversion and power management is similar to the change from old, analog phones to the new, high-tech, video phones. This has been achieved through the integration of all the conversion, control and communication functions using digital technology implemented in silicon. This dramatic advance in technology will forever change the power conversion and power management industries, expanding the horizon for more feature-rich and efficient electronic systems.

Steve Goldman, President and Chief Executive Officer, Power-One Inc., Camarillo, Calif.