Standalone power supplies and reliable systems

How do custom power supplies perform as a standalone part and as part of a system environment, in the context of computer system reliability?

Most of the embedded computing systems in the market today are high availability systems. Their expected downtime is lower than 0.001%, which comes to just a few minutes each year.

Powering these systems is not easy. You need a special powering scheme. This is complicated by form factors, different bus architectures. Moreover, a large number of standards are involved which have their own power requirements.

Power supply requirements for these new age computers and their accessories have not been standardized. Until we have these standards, embedded engineers will have to stumble from application to application, making changes as per requirement.

But custom power supplies are playing a major role in making these new age applications work. If you can’t have a catalog power supply for your unique requirements, you have no choice but to go for a custom power supply.

Custom power supplies can also help manufacturers achieve electrical compliance. This is because they are capable of providing different types of performance on key parameters like power factor correction, current sharing, live insertion, output current/power capability and so on.