Improving low-voltage DC/DC converter performance with GaN transistors:
The emergence of commercially available and cost-effective gallium nitride (GaN) power transistors begins a new age in power electronics. There are significant benefits in using enhancement-mode gallium nitride FET (eGaN FET) devices in power converters for existing data center and telecommunications architectures centering around an input voltage of 48 VDC with load voltages as low as 1 VDC. High-performance GaN power transistors can enable new approaches to power data center and telecommunications systems with higher efficiency and higher power density than possible with previous Si MOSFET based architectures.

Power Systems Design
David Reusch, Ph.D., and John Glaser, Ph.D.
January, 25, 2016
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Some of the best minds in our industry, like the group that was at a DesignCon 2016 book signing. Among them was Michael de Rooij, Efficient Power Conversion VP of Application Engineering who signed copies of his book Wireless Power Handbook, Second Edition. DesignCon attendees enjoyed browsing and buying books and having the authors autograph them as well. The authors also answered questions and discussed their areas of expertise with inquiring minds in attendance.

EDN Network
January 22, 2016
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Produced by industry experts, EPC has posted a nine-part educational video series on design basics, DC-DC conversion, wireless charging, reliability, and other applications for gallium nitride FETs and integrated circuits.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – January 2016 – Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (www.epc-co.com) has expanded its video library on GaN technology with the addition of a nine-part educational video series designed to provide power system design engineers advanced technical information and application examples on how to design more efficient power conversion systems using gallium nitride-based transistors and integrated circuits.

EPC’s new development boards enable power systems designers to easily and quickly evaluate the high efficiency achieved with 200 V gallium nitride transistors in class-E amplifiers, current-mode class-D, and push-pull converters operating up to 30 MHz.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.— January 2016 — Providing an easy-to-use way for power systems designers to evaluate the exceptional performance of gallium nitride transistors and get their products into volume production quickly, Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) announces high efficiency, GaN-based differential mode development boards that can operate up to 30 MHz.

Award Recognizes Innovation in Power Device Technology for Enabling the Commercialization of GaN

EL SEGUNDO, Calif, — January 2016 — Today, Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) announced that its CEO Alex Lidow was selected as the recipient of the 2015 SEMI Award for North America for the innovation of power device technology, enabling the commercialization of GaN. Dr. Lidow is being honored for his work in the area of Process and Technology Integration.

Dr. Zhang will be creating benchmark envelope tracking designs and assisting customers in the use of eGaN^® FETs for high frequency, high- performance power conversion systems.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.—January 2016 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) is proud to announce that Dr. Yuanzhe Zhang has joined the EPC engineering team as Director, Applications Engineering.

According to Powerpulse.net, “This selection is based on EPC's domination of the 50 most-read product news stories for 2015. EPC products account 8 of the top 50 product stories for 2015 (as measured by readership). This is the first time that a single company has accounted for such a large number of product news stories (that amounts to 2 per quarter), including 1 in the Top 10 and 5 in the Top 20.”

PowerPulse.net
January 4, 2016
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With the backdrop of slower global economic growth and expected higher interest rate in 2016, Alex Lidow, CEO of Efficient Power Conversion Corporation opines that companies looking for late-stage financing will see a greater emphasis on fundamentals such as revenue, margin and cash flow, and a lower emphasis on less-tangible metrics, such as the size of an audience without strong monetization.

Los Angeles Business Journal
December 23, 2015
By: Garrett Reim
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With mega deals for mergers and acquisitions took place in the past year, would innovations be stalled? Alex Lidow, CEO of Efficient Power Conversion Corporation said if you look at semiconductor end sales in this century, we have only seen a 5% compounded annual growth rate. It’s clearly showing signs of an end market that is very large and very mature and in the same time, the cost for a new facility or new product has skyrocketed.

Market Watch
December 23, 2015
By: Therese Poletti
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Recognized as an EDN Magazine Hot 100 Product for 2015, EPC2035/36 low-priced gallium nitride FETs give better performance, smaller size, and lower cost than an equivalent silicon solution. This is the third time in 5 years that EPC’s eGaN technology has been recognized as a HOT 100.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — December 2015 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation, (www.epc-co.com) the leader in enhancement mode gallium nitride FET technology, announces that its EPC2035 (60 V) and EPC2036 (100 V) high frequency, low-priced eGaN FETs have been recognized with inclusion in the EDN list of 100 Hot Products for 2015.

In 2014, data centers in the United States consumed approximately 100 billion kilowatt hours (kWh) of energy. To add insult to injury, the power needed to support this rapidly growing demand comes from an electrical grid that is wildly inefficient and is based on infrastructure that was created, in large part, more than a century ago. Just how significant is this waste? It turns out that the power grid supplies 150W of power to meet the demands of a digital chip that may need only 100W. Moreover, the amount of wasted energy is even greater because every watt of power lost through power conversion is transferred into heat. And it is necessary to remove that heat from the server farm by expensive and energy-intensive air conditioning. It takes about 1W of air conditioning to remove 1W of power losses, effectively doubling the inefficiency of this power conversion process.

New materials have emerged that can convert electricity more efficiently and at a lower cost. By eliminating the inefficiencies in this final stage in the server farm power architecture we can realize a direct saving of 7 billion kWh per year. This is doubled when air conditioning energy costs are added, bringing the total to about 14 percent of the total energy consumed by servers in the US alone. The cost savings are also significant. At the average cost of $0.12 per kWh, that’s a savings of $1.7 billion annually, which does not include the additional savings in system cost resulting from fewer power converters and air conditioners.

Datacenter Dynamics
December 15, 2015
By: Alex Lidow
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The Second Edition of the Wireless Power Handbook is an updated and expanded guide to designing efficient amplifiers for a wireless power transfer systems taking advantage of the superior performance of gallium nitride power transistors.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – December 2015 – Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (www.epc-co.com) announces the publication of the Second Edition of the Wireless Power Handbook. This edition is a practical engineering handbook designed to provide power system design engineers valuable experiences and points of reference critical to understanding and designing highly efficient wireless power systems using gallium nitride transistors.

EPC CEO and Co-Founder Alex Lidow comments on Tsinghua's $47B "Warchest" and quest to be #3.

Investor's Business Daily
by: Allison Gatlin
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Mr. Cataldo to direct EPC’s global sales and marketing organization and assist customers in adopting eGaN^® FETs and Integrated Circuits for leading-edge power conversion systems

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.—December 2015 — To support its accelerating growth, Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) is proud to announce that Nick Cataldo has joined the EPC leadership team as senior vice president of global sales and marketing. Mr. Cataldo has over 35 years of marketing and sales operation experience within the semiconductor industry. His primary responsibilities at EPC are creating and implementing sales and marketing strategies to achieve the company’s global sales objectives.

EPC CEO & Co-Founder, Alex Lidow on Bloomberg Radio discusses the flurry of M&A in the semiconductor space and how GaN is displacing silicon across the enterprise.

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Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) CEO Alex Lidow tells Light Reading he might be within two years of a breakthrough that would upend the entire semiconductor market: CMOS logic implemented in gallium nitride (GaN).

Light Reading
By: Brian Santo
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DC-DC “brick” converters are familiar to many engineers, and have wide usage in telecommunications, networking, data centers, and many other applications. This is due in large part to adoption of a common footprint defined by the Distributed-power Open Standards Alliance (DOSA) and generally accepted input/output voltage ranges. These converters provide isolation and voltage step-down, and have become increasingly sophisticated, with features that enable advanced system optimization and control.

EDN Network
November 23, 2015
By: John Glaser
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“The semiconductor industry will become one where there are a lot of large corporations and smaller companies will, in effect, be outsourced R&D, much like the pharmaceutical sector,” says Alex Lidow, CEO of Efficient Power Conversion. He says in this scenario Qorvo Corporation and Intersil Corp. could become attractive targets.

Lidow, however, believes consolidation may bring a dark ages to innovation in the semiconductor industry.

Forbes
November 23, 2015
By: Antoine Gara
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The future is clear, but, when that future is going to happen and who is going to benefit? That's not clear. I think the adoption rate is anybody's guess.

Investors Business Daily
November 17, 2015
By: Allison Gatlin
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Silicon, the stuff upon which the Valley was built, is maxing out. The future, according to some, belongs to gallium nitride. What is it, and what does it mean?

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