The self-driving technology that will decide the race for autonomous cars
A company that has been a major force behind GaN chips in the power conversion market is El Segundo, California-based Efficient Power Conversion. One of EPC’s two founders is Alex Lidow, who is probably GaN’s most prominent and enthusiastic evangelist. In the semiconductor business for 40 years, he was one of the inventors behind the power MOSFET, a silicon transistor widely used for power switching in servers and many other types of electronics. Now he’s advocating for GaN transistors to push those silicon MOSFETs out.
Velodyne will continue to sell spinning “puck”-style LiDAR units for automated vehicles developed for on-demand ride services, though the new non-spinning solid-state chip, developed with Los Angeles-based Efficient Power Corp., or EPC, is designed to be integrated into the exterior of vehicles for retail car buyers, Jellen said. The new chips are tiny, just 4 square millimeters, yet highly efficient owing to a new monolithic gallium nitride integrated circuit developed with EPC.