With Apple unveiling their new MacBook on April 10, 2015, they also opened up a new era in power management for computing devices. The USB-C port in the new MacBook features a true all-in-one port. It is capable of delivering power and bi-directional data at the same time. The technology eliminates a separate charging port, as it integrates the charging functions into the USB-C port.<\/p>\n
Intel has released their 6th generation processors, and very soon, a new generation of ultrabook computers, 2-in-1s, tablets, and external devices are expected in the market, ready with the USB-C port. However, with USB-C, fundamental changes are necessary in the existing power delivery architecture. This presents a new challenge to the system designers.<\/p>\n
Power Delivery at Present For instance, ultrabook computers use different battery stacks ranging from a single-cell battery to 4-cell batteries. Since each Li-ion battery has a typical operating voltage of 2.5 to 4.3 V, from discharge to fully charged status, the ultrabook may have a battery voltage ranging from 2.5 to 17.2 V. Ultrabook computers generally come with a hefty AC adapter with a 20V output.<\/p>\n Therefore, the charger within the ultrabook battery stack has to step down the 20 V DC to make it suitable to charge the battery. This is done through a buck topology. Again, the ultrabook has to provide 5 V on its USB-A\/B port for charging an external USB device. To generate this 5 V USB power rail, the ultrabook may have to apply a boost topology if it is using a single-cell battery pack. If it has battery stack of more than one cell, the ultrabook may use a similar buck topology as it does for charging.<\/p>\n Moving to USB-C The main consideration involving the use of USB-C technology lies in the absence of input-to-output relationship, which would warrant the use of buck technology when using a 5-20 V adapter voltage to charge a 2.5-17.2 V battery. Likewise, there is no definite output-to-input relationship either, for which a boost topology would be suitable.<\/p>\n This is where the buck-boost approach finds its merit. This operates in buck mode when there is an input-to-output connection and in boost mode when there is an output-to-input connection \u2013 the USB-C port being bi-directional. This flexibility allows for a more efficient design using the smallest solution size. It offers the best design solution, achieving all the requirements of a system designer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" With Apple unveiling their new MacBook on April 10, 2015, they also opened up a new era in power management for computing devices. The USB-C port in the new MacBook features a true all-in-one port. It is capable of delivering power and bi-directional data at the same time. The technology eliminates a separate charging port, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[1212,1211,1213],"class_list":["post-2686","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-newsworthy","tag-buck-boost-charging","tag-device-power-charging","tag-usb-c"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westfloridacomponents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westfloridacomponents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westfloridacomponents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westfloridacomponents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westfloridacomponents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2686"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.westfloridacomponents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2687,"href":"https:\/\/www.westfloridacomponents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2686\/revisions\/2687"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.westfloridacomponents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2686"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westfloridacomponents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2686"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.westfloridacomponents.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2686"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\nAt present, almost all electronic devices charge through USB-A\/B in low power applications. The traditional USB-A\/B port offers 5 V DC at up to 2 A current capabilities, but this is insufficient when charging high-power devices. At present, such high-power devices require a separate AC adapter with tens of watts power rating for charging.<\/p>\n
\n<\/strong>
\nUSB-C is a standard interface to connect anything to anything. Even though the default is 5 V, the USB-C port is capable of negotiating with a plugged-in device to raise the port voltage to 12 V, 20 V, or any other mutually agreed voltage and mutually agreed current level. Therefore, the maximum power a USB-C port can deliver is 20 V at 5 A, or 100 W. This is more than what most ultrabooks require \u2013 about 60 W.<\/p>\n