SST bus announcement comes with sensors attached

Although the news about the new SST bus is intriguing from a power communications POV, the bus's near-term charm is as an enabler for a new generation of motherboardtemperature sensors. Analog Devices, SMSC, and Andigilog have all recently introduced temperature sensors with a single-wire SST interface, aimed at the laptop/desktop motherboard market. The point of these versatile sensors, which take up little room and only require a single trace for communication, is to fine-tune a motherboard's fan operation and speed based on the temperature of the processing chips: If you're doing graphics rendering in a hot room, you'll require more fan action than if you're idling along in a cool environment.

Analog Devices (which I hadn't realized owns the trademark on Simple Serial Transport as well as SST) has introduced two temperature sensors (ADT7484/6) and a temperature/voltage sensor (ADT7486). The ADT7484/6 are digital temperature sensors, accurate to 1-deg C, that monitor their own temperature and either one or two remote sensor diodes, depending on the version. The 7485 also monitors its own as well as a remote diode's temperatures, and also monitors four external voltage channels and its own supply voltage using its on-board 10-bit ADC.

SMSC's parts are really pretty similar from the view at 50,000 feet. However, the company claims that its beta compensation technology gives unparalleled accuracy over a wide temperature range.

Andigilog has also announced similar parts. (Scroll waaaay down to see a table listing the parts, packages, and pricing.)