The most powerful feature of USB Type-C – Power Delivery

One thing that all mobile electronics devices have in common is that they all need to be charged. Over the years, despite the evolution of battery technology, the time between charges has become dramatically shorter. Just like our grandparents remember the good old days when a date was set with a telephone dial, all of us have memories of our Nokia phone lasting a week before it needed to connect the charger. And our loved ones, longing to communicate with us when we were grounded for seven days from using the phone. Memories take us back, but it’s effectiveness that counts.

There have been many advances that have created our current situation, but long story short there is currently no way for a mobile battery to power a current generation mobile device for a week. Therefore, all mobile vendors are looking at technologies that will allow for devices to charge faster, so that we can get enough juice, even in as little as 5 or 10 minutes.

USB™ Power Delivery addresses this issue and more. By providing 5 basic charging profiles, ranging from 10 to 100 watts, USB Power Delivery can both provide much more power to a mobile device and charge it faster. Even more interesting, it can replace previous power supplies and support both data and power over the same cable.

The critical part to enabling Power Delivery in a USB system is the USB Type-C™ Port Controller – a new piece of IP defined by USB-IF at the end of last year. It can negotiate power role and additional USB Type-C specific functions, like support for the DisplayPort Alternate Mode.

Below is the video of Cadence demonstrating its USB Type-C Port Controller acting as either power source or sink, when connected to a Google Chromebook Pixel.

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