imx6 powering by set of dc/dc's vs a PMIC?

[maximpodberezni]

Hi!

There are two designs: Sabre Lite and Sabre AI.

Sabre Lite uses a number of DC/DC converters to power a CPU, while Sabre for AI uses a PMIC to give all voltages. Can anybody explain what pros and cons provides each of the approaches? As TI always provides reference designs based on PMIC's I never asked such questions. Now I see two options and begin to doubt.

[AnsonHuang]

Hi, Maxim

        Based on my understanding, I think using DCDCs can make hardware system design simple, and cost low. But it must enable internal LDOs in order to scale voltage/freq, it will bring some power consumption penalty.

        Using PMIC can scale voltage/freq directly, bypass internal LDOs, it will save power, based on my experiment, it can save about 10% power on VDDARM and VDDSOC rail.

        Upper internal LDOs means SOC's internal PMU.

[maximpodberezni]

Hi!

Well, all I worry about is the power consumption and software complexity. Power consumption matters because I design a system suitable for industrial temperature. Software complexity matters because we need to release the HW/SW ASAP. As I understand the PF0100 PMIC is supported by Freescale Linux/Android distributions. Right?

[jamesbone]

You do not have to worry about it,  PF0100 PMIC  has been made specifically to support the i.MX6 family. So it is taking care of the power consumption and Linux BSP driver it is able to handle the software.