Xiaomi recently impressed battery worrywarts with its 100-watt Super Charge Turbo solution, but has yet to officially announce a phone with that technology. But when it comes to connecting up a couple of things with a USB cable, there's more to the equation than just power. Samsung is attempting to push that point by introducing a couple of power management chips today that can push 100W, but also puts priority on encryption.

The SE8A and MM101 controllers for Type-C connectors are both compliant with USB Power Delivery revision 3.0 — while it has been possible for any USB PD charger to string up 20 volts and 5 amps together, revision 3.0 allows the power supply to adjust potential in 20mV steps. This allows the supplier to more gently ease between different charging profiles and reduce any impact on batteries. Both chips also have embedded Flash memory to take in firmware updates.

As many power supplies tend to be other smart devices and computers, data security is also an important component of the new chips. At the same time, it also introduces the opportunity to constrain what users can do with the data they have on their devices. The MM101 uses AES to verify products and also has moisture sensors to protect the connection. The SE8A is the first power chip to integrate a secure element, which is touted under Common Criteria specification to EAL5 augmented assurance, to store keys for USB Type-C Authentication to act as a DRM checkpoint or for other content and activity padlocks.

The SE8A is in volume production right now while the MM101 is in the sampling stage. That said, you need not get too excited as most smartphones don't have complex enough batteries to handle 100W charging — OPPO put two cells in its Find X Lamborghini and R17 Pro and those max out at 50W. Unless more phone makers go for dual-cell options, it'll take a bit more engineering to get everyone up to that sort of speed.

Source: Samsung