Software adds calculation features to power design
Revisions to software by Flex Power Modules include new calculations to reduce risk and development time.
Flex Power Designer software version 3.2 will save engineers time when developing power systems, as well as reducing the risk of any problems with the design. It includes a time-saving numeric conversion calculator, which makes it easier for designers to calculate linear/Vout and linear/direct formatted values seen from monitoring data. The software also includes a new display address resistor suggestion feature, which calculates suggested values for the resistors SA0/SA1.
The software now supports test boards for Flex’s BMR480 and BMR490 DC/DC converters. It has also added the ability to monitor common parameters for power products from other vendors, increasing the flexibility available to designers. These parameters, at a minimum, will be input voltage, output voltage and temperature.
Features of the earlier releases of Flex Power Designer are retained, including thermal modelling, added in v3.0. This enables designers to simulate thermal behaviours without building hardware, for example to calculate hotspot temperature and overall system efficiency.
Olle Hellgren, director product management and business development at Flex Power Modules, said: “Flex Power Designer . . . provides an overview of the entire power system, enabling designers to take full advantage of the latest digital power technology”.
Flex Power Designer allows designers and system architects to track or simulate the efficiency of an entire power system. They can define relationships across power rails, including phase spreading, sequencing and fault spreading to understand behaviour at a system level and reduce time-to-market.
The software enables configuration and simulation of the control loop and straightforward configuration and monitoring of digital power modules. An SMBus tool and sample code are bundled with Flex Power Designer, for full SMBus control and production programming.
The simulation features of Flex Power Designer enable power-stage analysis to optimise tuning, as well as to visualise design behaviour. Engineers can investigate how a system matches up to their design requirements by looking at specific metrics such as transient response, output impedance and power dissipation.
Flex Power Designer is available to download free of charge from the website.
