Patent ID: 7584371

Claim:
A power control system comprising: a plurality of point-of-load regulators (POL) providing respective regulated output voltages; a manager for communicating control signals and operational parameters with said point-of-load regulators, said manager having a manager reference voltage source generating a manager reference voltage; a bi-directional, digital bus connected to said manager and to each of said plurality of point-of-load regulators to permit communication of said control signals therebetween; and a bi-directional analog bus connected to said manager and to each of said plurality of point-of-load regulators to permit communication of said operational parameters therebetween; wherein each said POL has a local reference voltage source generating a local reference voltage, said manager operating to poll each said POL via the digital bus, said POL in response to polling multiplexing the local reference voltage on the analog bus, said manager operating to compare the local reference voltage on the analog bus against said manager reference voltage and generating a signal on the digital bus to control the local reference voltage source in the POL until the local reference voltage is within an acceptable range of the manager reference voltage.