PMIC (power management IC), also known as power management IC, is a special purpose integrated circuit. Its function is to manage power supply for the main system.

Pmics are commonly used in devices that use batteries as power sources, such as mobile phones or portable media players. As such devices generally have more than one power supply (such as battery and USB power supply), the system requires multiple power supplies of different voltages, and in addition, to control the charge and discharge of the battery, meeting such demand in the traditional way will occupy a lot of space and increase the product development time, which has led to the emergence of PMIC.

The main function of PMIC is to control the flow and direction of electricity to meet the needs of the main system. In multiple power sources (e.g., external true current power source, battery, USB power source, etc.), select and distribute power to each part of the main system, for example, provide multiple power sources with different voltages, and charge the internal battery. Because most of the systems used are powered by batteries, they use high conversion efficiency designs to reduce power loss.

PMIC governance generally contains more than one function, including:

DC to DC converter

Low dropout regulator (LDO)

Battery charger

Power selection

Dynamic voltage regulation

Control of power on and off sequence

Power supply voltage detection

Temperature detection

Other functions

Since it needs to coordinate with the main system, the signal interface that needs to communicate with the main system will generally use I ² C or SPI, some pmics with simple functions will be directly connected to GPIO of MCU with independent signals.

Some pmics can be connected to the backup power supply for real-time clock supply, and some have simple power status indication, such as using led to display the battery charge and discharge status.

Some pmics are specially designed for a specific series of MCUs. The company that develops the corresponding MCU will have ready-made firmware to support the work of the PMIC