Time to market, cost, board size constraints, reliability and design capabilities are among the motivating factors in choosing Power Management IC versus a discrete solution. However, a discrete solution allows design optimization, offers higher power efficiency, flexibility and is easy to debug. Often, it is not possible to determine which choice will be better without understanding the details of design requirement.

This paper aims to discuss both the advantages and disadvantages of using Power Management IC versus a discrete solution on the Intel® AtomTM Processor E6xx series platform.