PowerNavigator GUI from Intersil speeds digital power system design, validation and monitoring

Intersil Corporation unveiled PowerNavigator version 5.2, a free, downloadable graphical user interface (GUI) that helps system designers quickly configure, validate and monitor their power supply architectures. The new features included in PowerNavigator 5.2 enable a high degree of power supply optimization. Combined with the drag-and-drop GUI interface, PowerNavigator 5.2 makes it straightforward to change features and functions of a digital power supply design without writing a single line of code.

The PowerNavigator 5.2 software GUI allows for configuration and monitoring of Intersil’s portfolio of PMBus-enabled digital power products, including digital regulators, controllers, multiphase devices, power modules, and digital power monitors. Using a PC, USB interface and a few mouse clicks, designers can configure and change any parameter, telemetry or rail sequencing for their digital power supply. Intersil’s PowerNavigator version 5.2 includes three new innovations:

• PowerMap adds more real-time information to the power rail blocks, such as device name, phase count, output voltage, output current, PMBus addresses, and current sharing capability. This additional information helps users more quickly visualize their system. PowerMap’s realistic system level view, with zoom-in/out and scrolling, replicates a system with multiple power rails delivering point-of-load current to ASICs, processors, DSPs or FPGAs.
• Rail Inspector quickly guides users through the power supply parameters set up. Rail Inspector brings up rail name and shows the number of devices, device address and status, as well as important supply parameters: input voltage, switching frequency, output voltage, and load current. Device options include clock synchronizing, sequencing, and current sharing. Users can then load and save configuration files in both text and hex formats.
• RailScope simplifies system validation, giving users the ability to plot all device telemetry – such as input voltage, output voltage, output current and temperature – for up to four rails at a time. RailScope’s system logging feature automatically logs telemetry and fault data for later analysis.

PowerNavigator 5.2 Features Summary

• Graphical monitoring makes display easy to read with entire system on one page
• Visual sequencing lets users sequence up and down multiple rails using drag-and-drop
• Fault monitoring tells user exactly why a rail shut down in a fault condition, speeding system development
• Full support for Intersil digital power products including point-of-load, digital regulators, multiphase, power module, and digital power monitors, covering a wide range of applications
• Configuration files can be created, saved and loaded for production programming, speeding system development
• Full projects can be saved, allowing configuration settings to easily be transferred from board-to-board during system development