Industrial control designs can benefit from the use of an intelligent power subsystem, one that can enable and disable power to various sections of the system to improve energy efficiency. A proper system approach to the design of a power subsystem can also provide solutions to problems associated with things like: control of power rail ramp up and ramp down, power fault detection, and thermal management. This application note will delve into the key considerations of power subsystem design for an embedded system to see how a programmable power subsystem can provide a variety of system level benefits. System design considerations for the power subsystem will be covered in enough detail to improve a designers ‘start-up time’ for a similar design and help avoid common pitfalls.