TW202030610A - Wide-range power measurement device for PCIe equipment performing measurement in the ultra-low current mode in the power saving mode and the large current in the performance mode - Google Patents

Abstract

The invention relates to a wide-range power measurement device for PCIe equipment. The device includes a micro-control unit, a current measurement unit, a switch unit and two sets of PCIe bus connection ports as a source end and an output end. The PCIe bus connection ports of the device have a source end and an output end respectively connected to a test host and a device under test. As a result, the power of the PCIe equipment under test in different power states is measured, especially a wide-range power measurement in the ultra-low current mode in the power saving mode and the large current in the performance mode to ensure operation correctness of the PCIe equipment.

Description

Wide-range power measurement device for PCIe equipment

The present invention belongs to the technical field of power measurement, and specifically refers to a large-range power measurement device for PCIe equipment, so that it can operate in ultra-small current in power saving mode and large current in high-efficiency mode. Measure inside.

Electronic products consume power, the lower the power consumption, the longer the use. Therefore, many power-saving specifications have been produced one after another, such as active-state power management (ASPM) for fast external interconnection (peripheral component interconnect express: PCIe). If you do not send data, enter the power saving mode to reserve power to increase usage time. For example, non-volatile memory express (NVMe) is an optimized and efficient expandable host controller interface. The concept of NVMe is to provide a transmission loop directly connected to the processor through the PCIe bus. Its greatest advantage is to provide ultra-low latency and high-bandwidth access. NVMe also has automatic power management state switching and dynamic power management functions. For example, the device switches from PowerState 0 to PowerState 1 after being idle for 50ms. Continue to idle and enter PowerState 2 (lower power consumption) after 500ms. There will be a short delay when switching. Therefore, NVMe has a greater advantage in power management, which is especially important for mobile devices, which can significantly increase battery life.

All electronic products have input voltage specifications, and the working accuracy can only be guaranteed within the specified input voltage range. So take the NVMe device of PCIe as an example, The power supply specification of this device is +3.3V and the voltage range is ±9%. Therefore, the highest voltage cannot exceed 3.597V, and the lowest voltage cannot be lower than 3.003V. If it exceeds this range, there may be abnormal phenomena. At the same time, PCIe’s power supply specifications define a maximum operating current of 3A, and the lowest power saving mode for PCIe NVMe devices can reach a few uW, corresponding to uA. Therefore, it is necessary to effectively measure the power consumption of PCIe NVMe devices in different states and specifications, especially in a large range (ultra-small current in power saving mode and large current in operation mode), so that the design can be accurately verified The power consumption of PCIe NVMe devices in high-efficiency power states or power-saving modes to ensure correct operation.

There are two common measurement techniques. One is the series connection pressure drop measurement method. The current will cause a voltage drop across all resistors in the entire loop. Therefore, the voltage value of the resistor of the device under test (DUT) is measured. Then, an analog to digital converter (ADC) is used to convert the analog voltage value into a digital signal, which is transmitted to the host interface and presented. The disadvantage is that the measurement range and accuracy cannot be balanced, because a micro-resistance is connected in series during the measurement. If the resistance is too large or the current is too large, the greater the voltage drop will be, and the voltage of the resistor of the object under test will be too low. If the specifications are exceeded, the DUT will work abnormally. For example, using a 1Ω resistor with a current range of about 1A, the voltage source DUT will decrease by 1V at most during measurement. If the voltage of the power supply is 3.3V, the voltage entering the DUT due to the measurement will become 3.3V-1V=2.3V, which is less than 3.003V according to the PCIe power supply standard. That is, the voltage of the object under test is less than the specified working voltage. For example, with a resistor of 0.1Ω and a current range of about 10mA, the voltage falls at 1mV during measurement. A small measurement voltage will make the ADC unable to measure changes due to the ADC scale range during sampling.

The second is a linear current sensor using the Hall effect. When the current passes through the carrier, a corresponding magnetic field is generated, and the change in the magnetic field is reversed back to a small voltage to show the magnitude of the current passed, and converted into a readable and quantifiable linear value, such as current table. However, the general current specifications are very large and have low resolution, which is a large current measurement. It can be measured only when the magnetic field changes greatly, so the common specification falls between 180 to 50mV/A, which means that a current of about 1A will generate about 50 to 180mV. If it is necessary to measure 1mA level, the measurement voltage must be 0.05 to 0.18mV. The scale change is very small, so the general Hall sensor products are used for high current and low resolution measurement. It is very difficult to measure mA level.

In other words, the existing technology cannot perform a wide range (including the ultra-low current in the power saving mode and the large current in the high-efficiency mode), especially for measuring the power consumption of PCIe NVMe devices in different state specifications. How to solve the aforementioned problems is an important issue in the industry and is also the subject of the present invention.

In view of this, the present invention is based on the above-mentioned needs and problems in an in-depth discussion, and actively seeks solutions based on the inventor's years of experience in related development. After continuous efforts in research and development, a wide-range power measurement device for PCIe equipment has finally been successfully developed, which can effectively solve the inconvenience and trouble caused by the existing inability to effectively measure a wide-range current.

Therefore, the main purpose of the present invention is to provide a wide-range power measurement device for PCIe devices, which can measure a wide range of currents and measure small currents, so as to satisfy the design that can verify the high performance of PCIe devices in each Status or power consumption in power saving mode.

In addition, the main purpose of the present invention is to provide a wide-range power measurement device for PCIe devices, especially the ultra-low current in the power saving mode and the large current measurement in the high-current mode to ensure The working correctness of the PCIe device.

For this reason, the present invention is mainly implemented through the following technical means To achieve the above-mentioned objectives and performance, the device is used for a test host to measure the power of a PCIe device under test in different power states, including; two sets of PCIe bus ports as a source and an output; A micro-control unit, which forms an electrical and signal connection with the PCIe bus port as the source, for selectively connecting to the test host, for receiving and responding to commands sent by the test host; a measuring current unit, which is connected to The PCIe bus connection port at the output terminal forms electrical and signal connections for the selective connection of the test equipment, and the current measuring unit can be connected to the micro-control unit, and one of the micro-control units is connected to the current measuring unit. Current measurement circuit and a small current measurement circuit, so that the current measurement unit can perform current sampling and measurement from different circuits according to the microcontroller command; and a switch unit, which is connected to the PCIe of the source end of the test host The switch unit has a first switching element corresponding to a large current measurement circuit and a second switching element corresponding to a low current measurement circuit, which are used to receive instructions from the test host to make the first and The second switching element can switch between short circuit and open circuit for powering off or powering on the device under test.

In this way, through the specific implementation of the aforementioned technical means, the present invention can connect the test host and the device under test through the PCIe bus ports of the source end and the output end, respectively, for the micro-control unit to execute commands, and because the current measurement unit has Large and small current measurement loops, so that the device can respectively import the corresponding sampling large and small currents, and accept the host command from the test host to switch between different loops according to the expected measured current, and accept the command to The device under test is powered on and off to measure the power of the PCIe device under test in different power states, especially in the ultra-low current mode in the power saving mode and the large current range in the high current mode in the performance mode. Ensure the correctness of the PCIe device, and increase its Added value, and can improve its economic benefits.

In order to enable your reviewer to further understand the composition, features and other purposes of the present invention, the following are some preferred embodiments of the present invention, and detailed descriptions in conjunction with the drawings, for those who are familiar with the technical field to implement them in detail. .

10‧‧‧Device

11‧‧‧Micro control unit

12‧‧‧Timing element

121‧‧‧Analog Digital Conversion Components

122‧‧‧Memory element

13‧‧‧Power Module

14‧‧‧Indicator Group

15‧‧‧Current measuring unit

151‧‧‧High current measurement circuit

152‧‧‧Small current measurement circuit

16‧‧‧Switch unit

161‧‧‧First switching element

162‧‧‧Second switching element

18‧‧‧PCIe bus port

19‧‧‧PCIe bus port

20‧‧‧Test host

21‧‧‧System management bus

50‧‧‧Equipment under test

The first figure: is a schematic diagram of the architecture of the wide-range power measurement device for PCIe equipment of the present invention, for explaining its main configuration status.

Figure 2: A reference table for the link state and power specifications of the present invention for NVMe devices in different power states.

The third figure: It is a figure showing the acceptable current range of more than two loops in the NVMe device of the present invention.

The fourth figure: is a schematic diagram of the operation of the wide-range power measurement device for PCIe equipment of the present invention in actual operation, to illustrate the state of measuring high current.

The fifth figure: is another schematic diagram of the operation of the wide-range power measurement device for PCIe equipment of the present invention in actual operation, for explaining its low current measurement state.

Referring to the first figure, the wide-range power measurement device 10 for PCIe devices of the present invention includes a micro controller unit (MCU) 11, a power measurement unit (PMU) 15, and a switch A switch unit 16 and two sets of PCIe bus ports 18 and 19 as source and output terminals. Device 10 can use PCIe bus from source and output Ports 18 and 19 are respectively connected to a test host 20 and a device under test 50 for measuring the power of the PCIe device under test 50 in different power states (Powe State), for example, it can measure PCIe NVMe devices in a wide range (Including the ultra-low current in the power saving mode and the high current in the performance mode) perform measurements to ensure the correct operation of the PCIe NVMe device.

The micro-control unit 11 forms an electrical and signal connection with the test host 20 through the PCIe bus port 18 as the source, and is used to receive and reply the commands sent by the test host 20 to complete the execution of various commands, including but not limited to different switching Measure current loop, power consumption measurement and calculation. The micro control unit 11 can further record the initial value and average it as compensation when the device 10 is not connected to the device under test 50, and perform the level correction of the initial analog-digital conversion. According to some embodiments, the micro-control unit 11 has a watch dog timer (WDT) 12, an analog to digital converter (ACD) 121, and a memory device (MCU-flash) 122 for the timing device 12 Constantly calculate and average the current value of the analog-digital conversion element 121, and store it in the memory element (MCU-flash) 122 as the initial value of compensation without waiting for the measurement time of the analog-digital conversion. According to other embodiments, the micro control unit 11 has a power module 13 to provide the power required by the micro control unit 11. According to other embodiments, the micro-control unit 11 is electrically connected to an indicator group 14 for displaying the power-on and power-off status indications of the power supply of the device under test 50 in different measurement modes.

The current measuring unit 15 can be connected to the micro control unit 11 for executing instructions of the micro control unit 11. The current measurement unit 15 is connected to the PCIe bus port 19 as the output end of the device 10 for the selective connection of the device under test 50 for current power consumption sampling measurement. The current measurement unit 15 has a large current measurement circuit (large current path: LCP) 151 and a small current measurement circuit (SCP) 152 connected to the micro-control unit 11. Measuring current unit 15 The high and low current measuring circuits 151 and 152 are connected to the PCIe bus port 18 connected to the source end of the test host 20 through a switch unit 16. The switch unit 16 has a first switching element 161 corresponding to the high-current measurement circuit 151 and a second switching element 162 corresponding to the low-current measurement circuit 152, for respectively introducing corresponding sampling currents and small currents for receiving the test host 20 host commands to switch different circuits according to the expected measured current. The first and second switching elements 161 and 162 accept instructions and switch between closed circuit and open circuit to realize power-off and power-on of the device under test 50.

Thereby, the device 10 can connect the test host 20 and the device under test 50 with the PCIe bus ports 18 and 19 at the source and output ends, respectively, to measure the power of the PCIe device under test 50 under different power states, and form A wide-range power measurement device for PCIe equipment.

Regarding the actual operation of the present invention, please refer to the first figure. The device 10 can be used to measure the device under test 50 such as PCIe NVMe devices. The second figure shows the link status and power specification reference table of the NVMe device in different power states. According to paragraph [0003], the current range of the PCIe and NVMe devices can range from 3A to several uA. As shown in the second and third figures, the measurement sampling current of the large current measurement circuit 151 in the current measurement unit 15 of the device 10 is set to 3A to 10mA, and the measurement of the small current measurement circuit 152 is The sampling current is set to 100mA to 10uA.

In this way, in actual measurement, the NVMe device as the PCIe of the device under test 50 is connected to the PCIe bus port 18 of the output end of the device 10. The PCIe bus port 19 at the source end of the device 10 is connected to the test host 20 for the test host 20 to provide power and PCIe communication signals to the device 10. The test host 20 has a micro control unit 11 that can be connected to the device 10 to provide corresponding commands to the SM bus 21.

After that, the test host 20 provides power to the device under test 50 through the device 10 according to the different operation modes of the PCIe NVMe device as the device under test 50, such as power saving mode, operating mode, idle mode or high-efficiency mode, And according to the expected current through the micro-control unit 11 of the device 10, the first and second switching elements 161, 162 of the switch unit 16 of the measuring current unit 15 are switched to short-circuit or open-circuit according to the received command. In this way, the device under test 50 is powered on according to different operation modes, and the micro-control unit 11 controls the large current measurement circuit 151 or the small current measurement circuit 152 in the measurement current unit 15 according to the expected measurement command. Perform expected switching, and perform current power consumption sampling measurement corresponding to the large and small current measurement loops 151, 152, and after the power consumption measurement and calculation of the micro-control unit 11, the obtained measurement value is transmitted to the test host 20 .

Therefore, as shown in the second and third figures, according to the PCIe NVMe device specifications, the current range can be from 3A to several uA. After calculation, the current measurement unit 15 of the device 10 selects the realization resistance of 0.05Ω and 3Ω.

When the resistance is 0.05Ω, the maximum current is 3A, and the current loop loses 0.15V at 0.05Ω. Take the 3.3V specification as an example, after deducting the voltage drop, it will reach 3.15V, which still meets the specification (3.003V). If it is equipped with a x20 times amplifier, the measurement range of the high current measurement loop 151 of the measurement current unit 15 is 3A to 10mA.

When the resistance is 3Ω, the minimum current is 30uA, and about 90uV can be generated on the current loop 3Ω. If matched with x20 times amplifier, the measurement range is 100mA to 10uA.

As mentioned above, the device 10 of the present invention is connected to the test host 20 and the device under test 50 via the PCIe bus ports 18 and 19 at the source and output ends, respectively, and the micro-control unit 11 executes commands. The measuring current unit 15 has a high current measuring circuit 151 and a low current measuring circuit 152, so that the device 10 can respectively import corresponding sampling high and low currents, and accept host commands from the test host 20 to comply with expectations To measure the magnitude of the current, switch between different circuits, and receive instructions to power on the device under test 50 to measure the power of the device under test 50 in different power states. The feature of the present invention is to break through a wide range of current measurement, in particular, it can use more than two current measurement loops for power sampling to increase the measurement range, even in the ultra-low current and performance mode in the power saving mode Measure the large current in a large range to ensure the correctness of the PCIe device.

The switch unit 16 can receive instructions from the micro-control unit 11, which can be used for programmable power-off and power-on of the power supply of the PCIe device under test 50.

Using the micro-control unit 11 to quickly sample analog-digital conversion and average, improve the accuracy of current measurement, and perform initialization correction. The correction value is stored in the memory element 122 of the micro-control unit 11, which can reduce the current measurement calculation error.

The micro-control unit 11 of the device 10 uses the timing element 12 and the analog-to-digital conversion element 121 to continuously calculate the analog-digital conversion value, so that the test host 20 can read the current value at any time, which improves the current measurement speed, thereby greatly improving its practicality.

In summary, it can be understood that the present invention has excellent originality. In addition to effectively solving the problems of habitants, it also greatly improves the efficacy. Also, there is no identical or similar product creation or public use in the same technical field. The invention has met the "novelty" and "progressive" requirements of an invention patent, and an application for an invention patent is filed in accordance with the law.

10‧‧‧Device

11‧‧‧Micro control unit

12‧‧‧Timing element

121‧‧‧Analog Digital Conversion Components

122‧‧‧Memory element

13‧‧‧Power Module

14‧‧‧Indicator Group

15‧‧‧Current measuring unit

151‧‧‧High current measurement circuit

152‧‧‧Small current measurement circuit

16‧‧‧Switch unit

161‧‧‧First switching element

162‧‧‧Second switching element

18‧‧‧PCIe bus port

19‧‧‧PCIe bus port

20‧‧‧Test host

21‧‧‧System management bus

50‧‧‧Equipment under test

Claims (5)

A wide-range power measurement device for PCIe devices, which can be connected to a test host to measure the power of PCIe devices under test in different power states, and includes; two sets of PCIe bus ports, which are used as source and output ports; A micro-control unit, which forms an electrical and signal connection with the PCIe bus port as the source, for selectively connecting to the test host, for receiving and responding to commands sent by the test host; a measuring current unit, and as an output The PCIe bus connection port at the end forms an electrical and signal connection for the selective connection of the test equipment, and the current measuring unit can be connected to the micro-control unit, and the measuring current unit is connected to a large current of the micro-control unit Measuring circuit and a small current measuring circuit, so that the measuring current unit can perform current sampling and measurement from different circuits according to the instructions of the microcontroller; and a switch unit, which is connected to the PCIe source of the test host Port connection, the switch unit has a first switching element corresponding to a large current measurement circuit and a second switching element corresponding to a low current measurement circuit, for receiving instructions from the test host to make the first and second switching elements of the switch unit The switching element can switch between short circuit and open circuit for powering off or powering on the device under test. The wide-range power measurement device for PCIe devices as described in the first item of the scope of patent application, wherein the PCIe device may be an NVMe device. The wide-range power measurement device for PCIe equipment as described in item 1 of the scope of patent application, wherein the micro-control unit of the device has a timing element and an analog number A bit conversion element and a memory element are used for the timing element to continuously calculate and average the current value of the analog-digital conversion element and store it in the address of the fixed memory element. The current value can be read at any time. The wide-range power measurement device for PCIe equipment as described in the first item of the scope of patent application, wherein the micro-control unit of the device has a power module to provide the power required by the micro-control unit. As described in item 1 of the scope of patent application, a wide-range power measurement device for PCIe equipment, wherein the micro-control unit of the device is electrically connected to an indicator group for displaying the power supply of the device under test in different measurement modes. , Power-off state.

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