Ever-smarter digital power modules ease energy-efficiency gains

摘要

Bullet-proof models for high-availability power-supply systems and key standards documents are freely available online to tempt adventurous designers into exploring their own solutions for safeguarding processes that cannot afford unplanned downtime. Adopted in 2000 as the telecom industry's standard for powering infrastructure equipment, the intermediate bus architecture (IBA) provides a stable yet flexible framework for design that's attractive to a much wider audience. For instance, MicroTCA is designed from the ground up to appeal to markets way beyond its tele-coms heritage, as evidenced by power-system options that span a single-module 300-W supply to the n+1 redundancy that strives to ensure telecoms' iconic 'five-nines' availability, or 99.999 percent uptime. Its format may appeal to designers as it is, or those looking for a template for custom hardware development.