Digital Power Forum 2008 Conference Seminars
Using the PMBus™ Protocol
Hosted by Bob White, Astec/Artesyn
Wednesday, September 17, 1:30-3:30 p.m.
This post-conference seminar is open to DPF'08 attendees for an additional fee of $67. You may sign up for the seminar when you register for the conference.
The PMBus™ protocol has become the standard of choice for managing power conversion systems with dozens of adopters and more and more PMBus compliant products available. This seminar is for all those who are considering using the PMBus protocol in their system – the power designer including PMBus in a power converter, a system engineer for a system that will use PMBus for power management, or even the firmware engineer who is writing the code for the host system maintenance processor. This seminar is not a review of the PMBus specifications. Instead the focus is on “how to use” the PMBus in a system.
The seminar will start with a few basics of the PMBus such as the transport layer and command language. Next, the seminar will dive into the details of PMBus and SMBus transport layer discussing items ranging from where to put the pullup resistors to how PMBus and I²C can be operated over the same two wires. The next set of topics address PMBus commands and how to use them for system management such as how to set and adjust the output voltage or how to program the overcurrent protection for a hiccup mode response. The last part of the seminar looks into the issues of programming code for a PMBus interface from the basics of handling the SMBus data protocols to handling the ALERT response.
Seminar Outline
- PMBus™ Basics
- SMBus: Physical Layer
- SMBus Protocols
- Using SMBus And I²C Together
- PMBus Data Formats
- Setting and adjusting the output voltage
- Monitoring and calibrating output current measurements
- Break
- Fault management, status reporting and ALERT protocol
- Monitoring voltage, current and temperature
- Fan management
- Manufacturer's data, user data, and manufacturer specific commands
- Implementing PMBus Firmware In A Microcontroller:
- Creating the byte, word, and block routines for reading and writing data via PMBus
- Hardware and firmware challenges associated with reporting warnings and faults
- Handling the delayed implementation of multiple commands that are linked by a restart condition
- Building a firmware engine to manage the communications process
