Microchip Technology announced the PAC1761 and PAC1861 families of 65 V energy-aware digital power monitors that combine accumulated power-measurement insights with the necessary high-voltage measurement headroom and transient spike protection capabilities to help make 48 V power architectures more efficient and resilient. As automotive, AI/data center, networking and industrial systems quickly migrate toward 48 V power architectures to improve efficiency and support higher power demands, designers need more than visibility into instantaneous voltage and current conditions. They need systems that understand energy use over time and can respond intelligently to changing power conditions.
The move to 48 V power architectures demands that digital power monitors have an additional operating margin, with measurement capability up to 65 V and spike protection up to 75 V to ensure transient survivability. The PAC1761 and PAC1861 devices add to these capabilities the intelligence to understand and react in real time to energy usage dynamics based on accumulated power measurement data.
Programmable alerts and flexible monitoring options
Microchip’s digital power monitoring devices feature programmable alerts for voltage, current and power excursions, step-limit detection to identify sudden load changes, and configurable accumulated-energy thresholds that enable proactive system management based on both instantaneous and long-term power behavior.
Target applications include automotive, AI/data center, networking, industrial, server, telecom/Power over Ethernet (PoE) and 48 V power distribution systems. The 12-bit PAC1761 and 16-bit PAC1861 options are available in VDFN-8 (similar to SOT23-8), VDFN-10 and MSOP-10 packages including automotive-orderable variants. Pin-compatible options can reduce redesign risk, shorten qualification cycles and give customers flexibility to move between devices as requirements, availability, cost or performance change.
Comments
“The industry conversation is shifting from measuring power at a single point in time to understanding and responding to energy behavior across an entire system and its lifecycle,” said Keith Pazul, vice president of Microchip’s mixed-signal linear business unit. “The PAC1761 and PAC1861 families are designed to help customers build better performing and more reliable 48V systems that can measure instantaneous conditions and understand energy consumption and availability over time. These scalable, low-power solutions reduce monitoring overhead and include pin-compatible package options that improve source flexibility while reducing design risk.”
Development Tools
Development support includes the EV12R33A evaluation board, a Python command-line interface (CLI) with a library, a Linux® driver and a generic C library with multiple MCU code examples.
Pricing and Availability
Products in the PAC1761 and PAC1861 families are available now starting at $0.56 each in 10,000-unit quantities for the PAC1761T-3E/E3 and PAC1861T-1E/3P, both in the MSOP-10 package. The price of the evaluation board EV12R33A is $49.00. You can purchase directly from Microchip or contact a Microchip sales representative or authorized worldwide distributor.