News

Attendance Records, Major Announcements Highlight Week at APEC 2007

March 01, 2007 by Jeff Shepard

The recently completed Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC) in Anaheim, California witnessed a flurry of activity and announcements from the major players in the power electronics industry. Sources close to the conference organizing committee revealed that APEC 2007 set records for attendance at over 2,400, with over 1,000 paid attendees (also a record). With the heavy foot traffic inside the exhibit hall, several companies took the oppurtunity to debut new products (see related stories in this week’s PowerPulse.Net).

Power Integrations introduced its 10W DPA422 – an extension of its DPA-Switch® DC-DC IC family – which is claimed to enable designers to develop efficient power supply designs for Power Over Ethernet (PoE) applications. The company stated that the device is especially suitable for Class 2 PoE implementations for applications such as VoIP telephones.

Toshiba America Electronic Components Inc. announced an expansion of its power semiconductor lineup with a broad selection of ON-resistance small signal MOSFETs (S-MOS) which are suitable for high-speed switching devices or dc-dc converters in portable electronics equipment. The MOSFETs feature what the company claims is among the lowest ON-resistance and lowest capacitance in the industry in 2.8mm x 2.8mm and 1.6mm x 1.6mm packages.

National Semiconductor Corp. introduced the LM5116, which the company claims is the industry’s first 6 to 100V current-mode buck controller for use in telecommunications, automotive and industrial control applications. The LM5116 is well-suited for step-down regulator applications from a high voltage or widely varying input supply. Among its prominent features are thermal shutdown, programmable soft-start, frequency synchronization, cycle-by-cycle current limit and adjustable line under voltage lockout (UVLO).

NXP announced the launch of the GreenChip III – its third generation of energy-efficient ICs for Switch Mode Power Supplies (SMPS). Designed specifically for notebook adapters and LCD TVs, the company claims that the new GreenChip III TEA1750 reduces no-load standby power consumption to 200 – 300mW – far below US ENERGY STAR® requirements and a reduction of over 200mW in standby power consumption compared to conventional solutions.

Among some of the other major product announcements at APEC: Intersil Corp. unveiled two new supervisors – the ISL88016 and ISL88017 – which offer pin-selectable voltage trip points along with popular functions such as power-on reset (POR) control, supply voltage supervision, and manual reset assertion in a small 6-pin TSOT package; Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. announced the release of a high-frequency 75V half-bridge n-channel MOSFET driver IC that delivers a 2A peak sink and source gate driver current; and Semtech Corp. announced the SC2447, which the company claims is the industry’s first dc-dc step-down (buck) controller for DrMOS power devices.

In industry news, members of the Power Management Bus (PMBus™) Implementers Forum unveiled version 1.1 of the open communications interface specification for the control of power systems. The new specification offers enhancements which simplify the management of system power supplies while extending the PMBus protocol to address the needs of ac-dc supplies as well as dc-dc converters.