Analog Devices expanded its family of power supply sequencer and supervisory products. By providing both a voltage monitoring and sequencing function for up to four power supply rails, the ADM1185 actively controls the order in which the rails are powered up and monitors the system to ensure the rails are quickly powered down if a failure occurs. The ADM1185 also features threshold detection of 0.6V ± 0.8 percent, this enables accurate monitoring of supply voltages lower than 1.8V where a high accuracy power supply is needed. The externally resistor programmable inputs enable a power supply designer to have any power up sequence simply by choosing which supply goes into which input. User programmable time delays can be set using external capacitors.

The ADM1185 quad channel voltage monitor and sequencer is powered from 2.7 V to 5.5 V and is capable of monitoring up to four supplies at 0.8 percent accuracy. In case of a voltage fault, an intelligent fault response feature shuts down the power good output flagging a system fault to the main system controller. The system controller can then power down the supply rails in a pre-determined order to prevent system damage. In the case of a power supply failure on the first Vcc all outputs are switched off.

In addition to the ADM1185, Analog Devices offers the ADM106x, ADM108x and ADM6819/20 voltage monitor and sequencer families, which support from 2 to 10 power supply rails.

The ADM1185 is sampling now with full production scheduled for December 2006. The devices are priced starting at $1.20 per unit in 1,000-piece quantities and is specified over an operating temperature range of –40 degrees C to +85 degrees C.