With the rapid development of digital high-speed IC technology and chip manufacturing process technology, the role of high-performance power ICs has become increasingly important. According to IC Insights, the power management IC market is expected to achieve an increase of more than 8% in 2018, making it one of the main drivers of analog chip growth in the next five years. What is the demand for power ICs in this era of ever-changing applications of electronic products and increasing demand for environmentally friendly green energy? What are the latest market layouts for power IC manufacturers? This article will analyze for you one by one...
PI: Integrated circuit Wins
The power conversion efficiency is improved, the power supply is smaller and more compact, and the voltage and current are controlled by the protocol load. The demand for this series is an innovative driver in the IC market. According to Doug Bailey, vice president of marketing at Power Integrations (PI), PI's secondary side feedback devices based on the new FLUXLINK technology stand out from the competition due to its high level of integration, while still maintaining a high price/performance ratio.
“This is an excellent example.” He said that OEMs who value quality control, have tracking systems, and are good at analyzing RMA know that power failures are often the primary cause of customer returns, so they spend more time. Look for higher quality power components, whether domestic or overseas. And Power Integrations is able to become a representative of high-end brands because "we focus on performance, but also on product reliability."
As we all know, in addition to Moore's Law, there is a law in the semiconductor industry, that is, "integration must win" - the technical opportunities created by combining functions on one IC, more opportunities than all these components together . To this end, Power Integrations integrates primary, secondary, and feedback link devices in a single package, removing a large number of discrete and passive components. Nowadays, the market faces the shortage of MOSFETs, MLCCs and other components, but if such products are used, there is no need to find components that are extremely volatile, which can greatly save money. In addition, since PI already owns and is expanding its device packaging production line in China, it can fully meet the sales needs of the Chinese market and benefit from it.
PI's products are primarily targeted at applications related to mains power. Doug Bailey said that they have found good growth in the direction of mobile phone chargers, especially mobile phone chargers using fast charging protocols or USB-PD. At the same time, it also saw the growth in HBA applications, which increased the market demand for PI “no-zero” smart switching power supply and low standby power intelligent LYTSwitch-6 products. They often require efficiency gains (especially under light load conditions) and are more compact, and these demands are driving the market.
“The heat sink is a device whose only function is to convert energy into the environment. But we think that using a heat sink is a 'design flaw' because it means that the developer has designed a power source that wastes precious natural resources. In Doug Bailey's view, it is the designer's responsibility to ensure that the power entering the power supply can be re-exported in the form of a conversion instead of being dissipated as heat. Therefore, improving efficiency and removing heat sinks is not only a development trend, but also the fundamental reason for driving PI to focus on efficient product design.
ADI: 1+1>2
The merger of ADI and Linear Technology can be said to be a major acquisition in the history of the semiconductor industry. Jerry Fan, president of ADI China, once said that ADI hopes to achieve "one ride" from the "leading industry" through this acquisition. “Dust”, becoming a leading global leader in high performance simulation.
Thanks to highly complementary market and technical strength, the integrated ADI has enhanced the new expansion of Linear products among major customers. On the other hand, it has incorporated ADI products and solutions into the broad base of small customers in Linear. And started a new sub-brand - Power By Linear. The data shows that after the acquisition of Linear, ADI's revenues for related products in the industrial market alone amounted to 2.8 billion US dollars.
"Three dimensions" escort industry 4.0
According to IHS Markit research, the global industrial semiconductor production value in 2017 was 49.1 billion US dollars, with an annual growth rate of 11.8%. The agency estimates that by 2022, the industrial semiconductor market will continue to grow, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 7.1%, while 40% of ADI's power business revenues come from the industrial sector.
Liang Zaixin, Marketing Director of ADI Power Products China, said that the true nature and foundation of Industry 4.0 is how to provide real-time control, software-configurable I/O, and the reliability, safety and health of all of these devices. As industrial 4.0 devices and devices become more intelligent in the future, flexibility, efficiency, communication, security and reliability are becoming key performance indicators, so ADI focuses on high efficiency, small size, and low electromagnetic interference. (EMI) provides strong support and innovative products in these three dimensions.
How to reduce system noise and interference, EMI is the key, and most of the EMI problems stem from power interference. Liang Zaixin listed the latest generation of LT8614 chips using Silent Switcher technology. It not only optimizes the magnetic field closed path through two reverse current loops, but also minimizes the ringing of the rising edge through system loop optimization, and its highly optimized packaging process, its EMI is quite low. In addition, it also greatly reduces the ripple, solves the noise problem, and makes the system's reliability and stability excellent.
“In the field of robotics, industrial control, and automotive, most customers are very interested in Silent Switcher technology. In the past, they only needed more than half a year to solve the EMI certification problem. The emergence of Silent Switcher technology is extremely Accelerated customer time to market," Liang Zaixin said. At present, ADI Silent Switcher2 products can achieve 93% efficiency and meet the CISPR25 Class 5 EMI specifications. Taking the LT8609 in this series as an example, even a simple 2-layer board can achieve very low EMI performance.
In order to make a highly integrated power supply product, the small size and thinness of the circuit board are the key directions. “Do a good job of power modules, let product design engineers focus on system-level design, instead of spending time adjusting a complex power system.” Liang Zaixin said this is a key point in the power module. He gave examples of a system IO and core power supply system, successfully saving 30 to 100 components, and the reliability of the entire system will be improved.
For example, the ADI μModule (micromodule) regulator LTM4622 is available in a slim, ultra-thin 6.25 x 6.25 x 1.82mm LGA and 6.25 x 6.25 x 2.42mm BGA package with a built-in switch controller, power FET, inductor And support components with high switching frequency and current mode control enable very fast transient response to voltage and load changes without sacrificing stability. In addition, the four-way 4A power module aligns the LTM4644 with an output that can be connected in parallel to provide up to 16A of current capability. The high efficiency design of the power module allows 4A continuous (5A peak) output current per channel, requiring only Capacitor input and output capacitors.
Driving the future of safe cars
Regardless of power management, powertrain or infotainment systems, headlights, etc., “safety” is always a key word in the transition of automotive power products, and in the innovative solutions offered by ADI, this is It may be reflected in innovative technical features such as ultra-low noise (electromagnetic interference), battery active equalization and energy optimization (safe driving longer distance), high and low voltage bidirectional conversion, new surge and high voltage protection mechanisms.
For example, how to connect a 48V battery pack and a 12V battery pack to achieve a two-way power supply and manage 48V and 12V systems for the coexistence of 48V and 12V voltages in automotive systems, thus ensuring the safety of the entire vehicle system. Running is the design idea of LTC3871.
Liang Zaixin explained that the 48V system appeared to optimize cable and body wiring, but many systems and equipment are still unable to migrate to 48V systems in the short term. Therefore, for a considerable period of time, there will be a situation where 48V and 12V systems coexist. The LTC3871 offers very good stability and bi-directional voltage conversion, and has become standard on the new generation of 48V in-vehicle systems.
In terms of the safety and reliability of the car system, the car may also experience an instantaneous high voltage at the time of startup or accidental interference due to the battery and the increasingly complicated system, which may cause damage to the components. The traditional solution is to increase the PVS tube, but there are disadvantages such as large volume. ADI's approach is to use the Surge Stopper, through the feedback and MOSFET control to eliminate the instantaneous pulse of the power supply peaks, to ensure that the output voltage is within the set standard range, the body system will be more secure. Combined with a controlled power supply process, the body system does not cause component damage due to unintended interference.
Power supply design challenges facing 5G communication
The 5G communication system not only requires very high power density, but also the power consumption of the chip and how to improve the conversion efficiency are also urgent problems to be solved. In Liang Zaixin's view, the traditional DC/DC power supply, due to the existence of MOSFET switching loss and inductance conversion loss, can not make breakthroughs in the current architecture. ADI has converted the design idea and developed the converter LTC7820 without inductance. , in one fell swoop to increase efficiency to more than 99%. On this basis, ADI has developed a hybrid switching power supply that combines the advantages of a non-inductive high-efficiency converter and a high-performance step-down circuit to ensure that the output voltage is arbitrarily adjusted while maintaining efficiency above 97%.
ADI has made many other improvements in power technology innovation and tuning for communications applications: supporting hot swapping with the advantages of an ideal diode, allowing communications systems to achieve better stability than before; power management with digital interfaces The system can record the power status, voltage, current, temperature, etc. of each channel, and even control the output voltage. Especially when the system is unstable, the circuit fault can be known through the power management system (PSM) with digital interface. Therefore, the measurement and output adjustment functions of the PSM are increasingly being reused in the field of communication.
In addition to PSM, POE (Power over Ethernet) has received extensive attention in communications applications because of the ability to transmit data and power over the network cable. As the capacity of 5G base stations increases, the power required is greater, and only the international standard of 25.5 watts is increasingly difficult to cope with. To this end, ADI is the first to introduce a 150-watt POE solution, becoming a powerful technology platform in the communications field.
Helping to develop efficient, clean and reliable energy systems
Energy is an important topic related to the national economy and people's livelihood. Whether it is for smart grid, renewable energy generation and storage, enterprise energy management, electric vehicle charging pile infrastructure, etc., whether it can provide a good supporting power technology program has become one of the standards for measuring the technical strength of an enterprise.
In the power supply, in order to ensure the system is uninterrupted, ADI proposes to use a super capacitor as a backup power supply, and provide a complete energy storage and management solution. For example, the LTC3350 monitors four Farad capacitors. It not only balances the charge and charge/discharge management, but also supplements the internal resistance of the capacitor and automatically balances all capacitors. It is very powerful. For the FCI monitoring device on the national grid transmission tower, ADI's approach is to supply power through the transformer or solar energy, and then through the application of high-performance MPPT maximum power point tracking and charging management device, the battery can obtain the maximum solar energy under the same illumination conditions. energy.
In addition, ADI has achieved many major breakthroughs in other IoT directions. For example, the vibration, temperature difference, light, magnetic field, etc. become the required energy harvesting product LTC3108/LTC3588; improve the wearable vital sign monitoring (VSM) level through optical and motion detection, impedance, bioelectric potential and signal conditioning technology; through precise geography Location detection, intelligent data collection and sensor fusion technology enable real-time decision-making, higher resource efficiency, and simpler smart farms connected to farm ecosystems.
