News and New Products

Atmel joins Z-Alliance's digital-power effort

By Margery Conner, Technical Editor -- EDN, 8/1/2005

Atmel is joining Power-One and C&D Technologies in the Z-Alliance, a group devoted to promoting Z-One Digital IBA (intermediate bus architecture)-compliant power systems. Atmel becomes the first semiconductor manufacturer to join the organization.

Power-One launched the Z-One Digital IBA technology last March. "We are working with Atmel to turn the Z-One Digital Power Manager module into an ASIC," said Dave Hage, Power-One's executive vice president. "In addition, we're working in the future toward collaboration on other Z-Alliance devices."

The trio's efforts will focus on the communications and data infrastructure markets, and jointly developed products should arrive before the end of 2005, according to the companies.

In addition, the three-company organization announced the launch of www.z-alliance.org, which contains information and specifications for Z-One digital-power products, including technology comparisons of hardware-configurable and I²C programmable devices, as well as Z-One Digital IBA news releases and links to related sites.