Taipei, Taiwan, Oct 23, 2006 – System General Corporation, the leader in Desktop PC power supply controlling ICs – today announced that its forward ATX reference design has passed US 80 PLUS certification for energy efficiency. This reference design of 300W power solution adopts System General's innovative IC products, including PFC/PWM combo control chip, flyback PWM control chip, and supervisor IC. With extremely simple circuit structure and low BOM cost, this solution achieves a power factor of over 0.98, average power conversion efficiency of 82.51 percent, and standby energy consumption lower than 1W. It ideally meets the 80 PLUS and International Low Standby Power Consumption standard.

To speed up the development of energy saving technology, the USA and European Union have established regulations and standards sequentially for the requirements of power efficiency. The 80 PLUS Project is administered by the U.S. 's Ecos Consulting to encourage manufacturers of high-output desktop and server power supplies to achieve a minimum of 80 percent efficiency at 20 percent, 50 percent and 100 percent loading points for improved energy utilization by incorporating the system's internal power.

“It's the future trend to produce a power system meeting international energy saving regulations. However, it's hard for power supply manufacturers to fulfill the requirements of high-quality and low-cost operation simultaneously,” said Tom Yang , the CEO of System General. “Through the integration of multiple innovative patent technologies, SG successfully developed the power solution that passed the rigorous 80 PLUS testing. We provide full technical support and optimal pricing to help customers develop new products with advanced marketing competitiveness.”

System General is one of the rare IC design companies that can provide complete forward power solutions in the industry. The forward ATX power reference design solution uses SG's self-developed & patented Switched Charge Multiplier-Divider (US6,812,769), Power Supply having Multi-Vector Error Amplifier for Power Factor Correction (US6,900,623), and PWM controller having modulator for saving power and reducing acoustic noise (US6,781,356), to enhance its total performance dramatically and make it more competitive. This solution also features an advantage of high integration that includes single chip integrating PFC & FWM and multiple built-in protection functions. Amazingly, customers only need to trade an extra cost of USD$3.0 from the original design and introduce their 80 PLUS verified models quickly, making it the ideal solution featuring the optimal price-to-performance ratio available in today's market. In the future, SG will release more revolutionary power solutions continuously, with excellent R&D capability.

Introduction of SG Power ICs in this Solution:

SG6931/2 – The highly-integrated PFC/PWM combo-IC for forward topology of a power supply/adaptor is designed to provide current transfer operations in Continuous Conduction Mode (CCM) for high output power systems rated above 150W. Its main features include: built-in green-mode function, highly integrated Over Temperature Protection (OTP), Over Voltage Protection (OVP), Under Voltage Protection (UVP), Over Power Protection (OPP), Short Circuit Protection (SCP) and Brown-Out protection. Its patent amplifier technology also improves output dynamic response. In addition, SG6931/2 allow maximum PWM cycle adjustment.

SG6858 – The low-watt fly-back PWM IC, its patent Green Mode technology, which realizes super-low standby power and built-in synchronized slope compensation, greatly improves system stability. In addition, it also features constant power output limits, programmable PWM frequency, Cycle-by-cycle Current limiting, and many other features.

SG6516 – The highly-integrated supervisor IC has overall supervising and protecting functions that can provide complete protection for power systems. The SG6516 provides two 12V Over Voltage Protection (OVP), Under Voltage Protection (UVP), and Over Current Protection (OCP) functions. Furthermore, it also features highly precise VRI & VPGI, built-in 20mS OCP timing delay protection, 300mS power good signal protection, and PSON controlling switch signals.

System General can provide customers complete technical documents of this ATX power solution reference design, which includes demo-board, reference circuit, BOM list, Gerber file, etc., and real-time professional technical service. For more related information, please visit the product / desktop power solution at the System General web site ( www.sg.com.tw/ ATX-POWER) .