Custom Power Supplies and Chips from Well-known Companies
Designing with components from well-known chip companies gives a lot of flexibility in power management. But there is a downside to this flexibility. One issue is, you need independent power supply wells to drive the chip. This can be a problem for custom power supply makers.
But then, most customers who need these embedded devices can do without this flexibility. They are okay with sacrificing board space and cost. And if you don’t need the rails, adding them won’t give you any positive return on the money you put into them.
But what if you could collapse the rails? Will that lead to more efficiency and lower power consumption? Can it even be done? Yes, it can be done but then you will have to design the custom power supply carefully.
Typically, in any major electronic application, there are two types of rails- main power rails and standby rails. It is possible to design a solution with a chip from major chip company and merge the suspended wells with main wells.
This will also reduce the board space and overall cost of designs that don’t require those features. Note that the chip maker may have given some validated guidelines for the design. You will have to see how they stack up against saving board space and reducing cost.
