POWER MANAGEMENT APPARATUS AND METHODS

摘要

This invention relates to apparatus and method for power management and especially to power management integrated circuits (PMICs). In one aspect the invention relates to a PMIC (102) having an internal non-volatile memory (NVM 115) for storing boot settings for the PMIC. The PMIC also has control circuitry (111) for detecting whether a source of boot settings is available, such as an NVM (202) external to the PMIC, and, if so, using any settings stored in the external source in preference to the relevant settings stored in the internal NVM. The external settings can thus override any internal settings, which is useful for fault diagnosis and/or development. In one aspect the PMIC may have programming circuitry (401) for automatically programming boot settings from an external source into the internal NVM (115).