GaN Adoption Tag Archive

Moore’s Law Is Dead. Long Live Moore’s Law.

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Written by:

Recode

 

 

 

 

 

 

The year is 1965. The Beatles release four albums. The war rages on in Vietnam. And a research-and-development professional by the name of Gordon Moore makes a bold prediction that will have irrevocable implications on technological development, impacting many sectors of the global economy for decades to come.

Over the last 50 years, Moore’s observation — that the number of transistors on silicon chips and therefore their processing power was doubling approximately every 24 months — has evolved from observation to market demand to Moore’s law.

As we reflect on Moore’s law at its 50th anniversary, we cannot overlook its significance. It is at the heart of the entire technology industry and beyond, driving productivity, the economy and, indeed, human society.

 

mooreslaw_660

 

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Gallium Nitride Power Transistors Priced Cheaper Than Silicon

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Written by:

Spectrum IEEE

 

Last week, El Segundo, Calif.-based Efficient Power Conversion, announced that it’s offering two types of power transistors made from gallium nitride that it has priced cheaper than their silicon counterparts.

“This is the first time that something has really been higher performance and lower cost than silicon,” CEO Alex Lidow says. “Gallium nitride has taken the torch and is now running with it.”

Gallium nitride and silicon carbide have long been attractive alternatives to silicon in power electronics: they’re capable of faster switching speeds and can handle a higher voltage than a same-sized silicon device. But silicon has long been less expensive to manufacture.

Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) has two cheaper offerings: a 60-volt and a 100-V power transistor. The company says such devices should be ideally suited for a range of applications, including wireless power transfer, laser ranging systems for cars, and RF transmitters.

 

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Adios, silicon: Why exotic designs are the future for the chips in your gadgets

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Written by:

CNET

 

 

 

Silicon falls into what the chip industry calls group IV of the periodic table of the elements. One way to keep pushing progress will involve elements drawn from columns to either side of the group IV column — thus the term III-V materials, pronounced simply “three-five.”

With III-V chip manufacturing, all that stays the same — but silicon will get new elements layered on top. That will help electrons flow faster, which means less voltage needed to get them moving. If the chips need less power, then transistors can be smaller and switch faster.

One company betting its future on III-V materials is Efficient Power Conversion, a 34-person startup led by Chief Executive Alex Lidow. EPC already is seeing steady revenue growth from devices that incorporate a III-V layer made of gallium nitride (GaN). In 2016 or 2017 he expects to adapt the gallium nitride manufacturing process to work for the logic circuits that do the thinking in computer processors. Because of gallium nitride’s electrical properties, “you immediately get a thousand times potential in improvement” over conventional silicon, he said.

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Energy-Saving Material Gets a Boost

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Written by:

WSJ

 

 

 

 

 

A material used to make power-saving light bulbs is gaining momentum in the world of semiconductors. KKR & Co. is the latest to place a bet.

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48V Data Center Rack Saves $$$

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48 V Server Rack

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

“The reason we stop at 12V is because of the limitations of silicon,” specifically in power MOSFETs, explains Alex Lidow, CEO of Efficient Power Conversion (EPC), a company that specializes in GaN circuitry. “The speed of your device — how fast it can switch — determines how far it can reach in terms of input voltage to output voltage. Because of the much higher switching speeds of gallium nitride you can efficiently go from 48V all the way down to 1V all in one stage.”

EPC supplies Texas Instruments Inc. (NYSE: TXN) with GaN transistors that TI incorporates in its LMG5200 modules designed for 48V to 1V conversion. TI claims its modules operate at 90% to 91% efficiency, Lidow notes.In comparison, the efficiency of multi-stage voltage conversion with silicon MOSFETs maxes out somewhere in the 77% to 78% range. When you go from silicon-based conversion to GaN-based conversion, “you cut your power losses in half, and you improve your server power efficiency by 10% with just that one act,” Lidow says.

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