Power management for portable devices

Today's portable devices combine wireless communication and navigation with consumer electronics. As a consequence, the computing power, the size of the display and the graphics operations of portable devices are increasing by a large amount. Even when changing to new process technologies for the processors, the power consumption often increases due to the higher operating frequencies. The battery technology developments are not improving by the same factor and as a result, intelligent power management becomes mandatory to achieve the required operating hours and days. In addition, the portable devices become smaller and slimmer which requires a reduction of the number and the size of the components. In this paper, a highly integrated power management IC will be presented and power management trends and requirements for portable devices will be discussed.