• henfredemars
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    11 months ago

    There’s a whole protocol for talking to supported devices so they can negotiate power delivery.

    • Refurbished Refurbisher@lemmy.sdf.org
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      11 months ago

      That can be done with a single chip. What’s actually complicated here is the switch-mode power supply itself.

      It’s how you get a 90% efficiency vs a 10% efficiency from linear power supplies (transformer, full bridge rectifier, and a big ass-capacitor, then if you need a stable voltage, a voltage regulator, which makes things even less efficient). The benefit of linear supplies is that it’s very easy to produce very clean power for analog electronics, but digital electronics have a lot more wiggle room for noise in the power. Well designed SMPS have both low noise levels and also hogh efficiency. Those are more expensive :P.

      There’s a field of engineering specific to power electronics. It can get super complicated. I don’t understand a lot of it myself.