Today’s thermal management systems are composed of a variety of discrete components: MCUs for PWM-generation (multiple of these for large fan control systems), MCUs (either shared or dedicated) for temperature sensing and the host application processor (CPU, FPGA, ASICs etc.) that share fan speed management with the main application processing functions. For large end products like chassis based communication systems, there are typically very complex thermal management solutions made up of many of these discrete components. In much smaller form factor products, these solutions typically are still composed of multiple discrete solutions but are much simpler. In this article, we’ll examine how the proper use of a programmable system-on-chip solution, like Cypress’s PSoC technology, can simplify advanced thermal management solutions, save BOM cost by integrating nearly every discrete used in such systems and enable new capabilities to greatly enhance the reliability and marketability of the end products these solutions reside in.
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