PowerLines by Linnea Brush

Conferences and Forums

PowerLines by Linnea Brush

Linnea Brush September 28, 2009

Digital Power Still Making Waves

Power Channels: Digital Power, Energy Efficiency, Power Components, Switch-Mode Power

Successful commercial introduction is apparently not enough to end controversy about a new technology. Darnell has focused on digital power since 2004. Back then, the issue was, “When will it become commercial?” Now that it has crossed over commercially, people are arguing the numbers: “How big is the market?” “How many controller ICs are really being sold?” The sixth annual Digital Power Forum (DPF) just concluded, and in some ways the challenges are getting stronger. Yet there are still companies denying the commercial reality of digital power.

There is no real “side” to take, however. Analog is here to stay, and there is no point in arguing dominance of one technology over the other. The problem comes from not knowing what you don’t know. DPF has always attracted a strong analog contingent, and these delegates have always raised important technical points. This year, the “anti-digital” group was particularly vocal, but they’re starting to move into the business/marketing sphere. This is problematic even if you’re a product marketing manager, since your perspective is based on what you see in your own company and industry.

For example, let’s say your analog company makes a design bid that gets rejected. You might assume that the design win has gone to another analog designer, but the customer might have decided to go with a digital design instead. But you just see all these potential customers asking for analog bids. Ergo, no interest in digital? Digital may not be the first thing a customer thinks of, but it could be the design they ultimately go with.

DPF had a lot of these interesting little challenges peppered throughout the conference. They usually came from the delegates, but sometimes the speakers themselves posed issues. At the market level, an unplanned presentation was added to the program to address a question about the size of the digital controller IC market. “Defining the market” is still a problem, and most people believe “high-end, high-performance” is the only market for digital power management and control.

The market for “closing the loop” digitally is actually bigger than most people think. The delegates at DPF were skeptical that digital would get employed widely in low-cost, high-volume consumer applications, for instance. No one saw ac adapters as a good market for digital, with one delegate saying, “There are applications where we will not see these technologies take over.” That is likely a true statement, but digital is being used in ac adapters already. Will they take over in these kinds of applications? Probably not, but DPF attendees don’t always care about “taking over the market.”

A good example of this was a speaker from Texas Instruments who was chided for presenting data that didn’t really produce a result. After some debate about this, an audience member broke in and said, “So what? I don’t need a result – I just need to see what happens when digital is used, and the speaker did a good job of showing that. This will help me.” Usefulness doesn’t always mean dominance, and the importance of digital on many levels was well-represented by the questions delegates asked.

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We would like to hear your comments on the topics discussed in this column. We welcome the opportunity to publish opposing opinions. Please email Jeff Shepard at jshepard@darnell.com.

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