Developers are hard at work on the machine learning necessary for safer and more-autonomous vehicles. But all the AI in the world won’t be enough if the car relies on inadequate sensors. That was clearly demonstrated in one fatal Tesla crash that occurred in part because the car’s camera didn’t correctly identify an oncoming truck. To ensure smart vehicles have a reliable model of surrounding objects — particularly the ones the cars identify as “threats” — most rely on one or more lidars, or laser-based remote sensors.

Extreme Tech
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LAS VEGAS — Once again the marathon that is CES is drawing to a close. Four days of trade show plus two days of media events. All sprawled across five miles of Las Vegas in some insane number of hotels and conference venues. As usual, I stuck it out so you don’t have to. Here are some of the images that struck me as interesting, weird, or just plain worth remembering:

Extreme Tech
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This article takes a deep dive into lidar technology. It explains how the technology works and the challenges technologists face as they try to build lidar sensors that meet the demanding requirements for commercial self-driving cars.

The bottom line is that while bringing lidar costs down will take a significant amount of difficult engineering work, there don't seem to be any fundamental barriers to bringing the cost of high-quality lidar down below $1,000—and eventually below $100. That means the technology—and ultimately, self-driving vehicles that depend on lidar—should be well within reach for ordinary consumers.

Ars Techinca
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EPC2049 GaN power transistor offers power systems designers a 40 V, 5 mΩ power transistor about 8 times smaller than equivalently rated silicon MOSFETs for point of load converters, LiDAR, and low inductance motor drive.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — December 2017 — EPC announces the EPC2049 power transistor for use in applications including point of load converters, LiDAR, envelope tracking power supplies, class-D audio, and low inductance motor drives. The EPC2049 has a voltage rating of 40 V and maximum R_DS(on) of 5 mΩ with a 175 A pulsed output current.

Within the AirFuel^TM Alliance booth at CES 2018, EPC will show how gallium nitride (GaN) semiconductors are at the core of large surface area wireless power. In the EPC hospitality suite, wirelessly powered systems for the home and GaN based, industry-leading LiDAR systems used in autonomous vehicles will be on display.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — December 2017 — Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) will be demonstrating the power of eGaN^® technology to enhance two game-changing consumer applications – wireless power and LiDAR for self-driving cars – at the 2018 Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, January 9^th through the 12^th.

Ultra-fast transition eGaN FETs used on the EPC9126HC can drive high current pulses up to 150 A and pulse widths as low as 5 ns, thus enhancing the quality of information a LiDAR system will detect, including the accuracy, precision, and processing speed.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — November 2017 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) announces the availability of the EPC9126HCa 100 V, 150 A high current pulsed laser diode driver evaluation board. In a LiDAR system, used to create 3-D maps for autonomous vehicle applications, speed and accuracy of object detection is critical. As demonstrated by this board, the rapid transition capability of eGaN FETs provide power pulses to drive the laser up to ten times faster than an equivalent MOSFET, thus enhancing the overall performance of a LiDAR system.

EPC2040, an eGaN^® power transistor optimized for LiDAR applications, placed first in the Passive Components & Discrete Semiconductors category of ECN magazine’s prestigious 2017 Impact Award.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif — November  2017 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation’s (EPC) is proud to announce that Electronic Component News (ECN) — a leading trade publication for electronic design engineers — has awarded the EPC2040, enhancement mode gallium nitride (eGaN) transistor its ECN Impact Award for 2017 in the Passive Components and Discrete Semiconductors category.

Superior characteristics of eGaN^® FETs and ICs, such as low output capacitance, low input capacitance, low parasitic inductances, and small size used in these demonstration kits show that GaN FETs and ICs are ideal for increasing efficiency in highly resonant, AirFuel™ Alliance compatible wireless power transfer systems.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.—October 2017 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) today announces the availability of two new demonstration kits -- the EPC9127, a complete wireless power kit including a 10 W, class 2 amplifier, category 3 receiver device and the EPC9128, consisting of a 16 W, class 3 amplifier and two receiver devices (categories 3 and 4). These systems, coupled with previously announced EPC9120, 33 W class 4 and the EPC9121 multi-mode kit capable of operating to either an AirFuel Class 2 standard with a category 3 device or a Qi (A6)/PMA standard with a compatible receiving device provide a full range of wireless power demonstration kits to allow for complete, wide-spread implementation.

EPC will exhibit an innovative wireless power tabletop at 2017 Wireless Power Summit highlighting the capability of GaN-based semiconductor magnetic resonance technology to provide wireless power over a large surface area to many receiving devices such as cell phones, laptop computers, and table lamps – at the same time!

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — September 2017 — The future of wireless power and its eventual ubiquitous adoption is dependent upon the ability of end users to place any electrical item on a surface and have it powered without having to “plug in.” It is this ability that EPC will demonstrate at the Wireless Power Summit 2017 being held in Denver, Colorado October 5th and 6th at the Embassy Suites Hotel Downtown.

Alex Lidow, CEO and co-founder of Efficient Power Conversion Corporation, has demonstrated the ability to transmit power from large surfaces.

Digital Journal
September 18, 2017
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Nextbigfuture interviewed Alex Lidow, CEO of EPC. EPC is a leader in Gallium Nitride electronics and now is leading the charge to a new age of wireless power. In 5 to 10 years, we could begin to see entire houses or office buildings switching from costly wiring of buildings to a complete large area wireless solution.

NextBigFuture
September 9, 2017
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Superior characteristics of eGaN^® FETs, such as low output capacitance, low input capacitance, low parasitic inductances, and small size make them ideal for increasing efficiency in highly resonant, AirFuel^™ wireless power transfer systems.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif.—August 2017 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (EPC) today announces the availability of a complete class 4 wireless power charging kit, the EPC9120. The system can transmit up to 33 W while operating at 6.78 MHz (the lowest ISM band).  The purpose of this demonstration kit is to simplify the evaluation process of using eGaN FETs for highly efficient wireless power transfer.  The EPC9120 utilizes the high frequency switching capability of EPC gallium nitride transistors to facilitate wireless power systems with full power efficiency between 80% and 90% under various operating conditions.

With the current maturity of Class-D audio amplifier architectures, amplifier fidelity and efficiency limitations are primarily at the device level. Silicon MOSFETs have been evolving for almost forty years, and their progress towards a perfect switch has slowed dramatically. There are some fundamental characteristics of MOSFETs that degrade sound quality and efficiency. In 2010, the enhancement mode Gallium nitride (GaN) power FET was introduced by Efficient Power Conversion (EPC), providing a large step towards the perfect switch.

Audio Engineering Society
May 11, 2017
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EPC2111 GaN half bridge offers power systems designers a solution that increases efficiency for complete overall point-of-load system applications over 85% at 14 A when switching at 5 MHz and over 80% when switching at 10 MHz and converting from 12 V to 1.8 V.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — June2017 — EPC announces the EPC2111, 30 V enhancement-mode monolithic GaN transistor half bridge. By integrating two eGaN^® power FETs into a single device, interconnect inductances and the interstitial space needed on the PCB are eliminated.  This increases both efficiency (especially at higher frequencies) and power density, while reducing assembly costs to the end user’s power conversion system. The EPC2111 is ideal for high frequency 12 V to point-of-load DC-DC conversion.

During last week's PCIM Europe event in Nuremberg, Germany, direct 48V-to-1V power conversion architectures were a significant topic. “The use of GaN switches in 48V-to-1V direct dc-dc converters can improve system performance by 30%, compared with today’s best silicon-based designs,” commented Alex Lidow, CEO of Efficient Power Conversion.

PowerPulse
May 31, 2017
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Produced by industry experts, Efficient Power Conversion has posted six videos showing active end-use applications such as a wireless power tabletop, high performance LiDAR, single-stage 48 V – 1.8 V DC-DC conversion, and precision motor drive control using gallium nitride transistors and integrated circuits.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. – April 2017 – Efficient Power Conversion Corporation (www.epc-co.com) has created and posted to its website six short videos presenting end-customer applications using eGaN^® FETs and ICs. These videos show how GaN technology is changing the way we live and challenging power systems design engineers to incorporate the high performance of gallium nitride FETs and ICs into their next generation power system designs.

Light detection and ranging (lidar) is a versatile light-based remote sensing technology that recently has been the subject of great attention. It has shown up in a number of media venues and has even led to public debate about the engineering choices of a well-known electric car company, Tesla Motors. While this article is not going to enter the fray, it will provide some background on lidar and discuss its strong connection to power electronics technologies.

Published in: IEEE Power Electronics Magazine ( Volume: 4, Issue: 1, March 2017 )
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Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) has dealt another blow to the silicon MOSFET power element with its Generation 5 (Gen5) process enhancements, bringing improved performance while decreasing the cost of off-the-shelf Gallium Nitride transistors and shrinking their die size and board footprint.

Alex Lidow, EPC’s CEO/co-founder, and his team have once again put their expertise to work in their efforts to provide designers these unique power solution choices for new markets that need performance beyond what silicon devices have been able to provide. The team’s technical capabilities and in-depth understanding, even into the quantum mechanics of the process, are enabling both better performance as well as shrinking the size and cost of their solutions

EDN
March 15, 2017
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The $330 billion silicon chip industry is the foundation of everything electronic. But it’s slowing down as it reaches a new level of maturity that is prompting a bunch of mergers and acquisitions.

That’s why Alex Lidow, an industry pioneer and the chief proponent of an alternative material to silicon — gallium nitride (GaN) — feels like his time has come. His company, Efficient Power Conversion (EPC), is unveiling a new generation of eGaN chips that are half the size of previous chips and have significantly higher performance.

VentureBeat
March 15, 2017
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EPC introduces EPC2045 and EPC2047 eGaN^® FETs that are half the size of prior generation eGaN transistors with significantly higher performance.

EL SEGUNDO, Calif. — March 2017 — Efficient Power Conversion Corporation, the world’s leader in enhancement-mode gallium nitride on silicon (eGaN^®) power FETs and ICs advances the performance capability while lowering the cost of off-the-shelf gallium nitride transistors with the introduction of the EPC2045 (7 mΩ, 100 V) and the EPC2047 (10 mΩ, 200 V) eGaN FETs. Applications for the EPC2045 include single stage 48 V to load Open Rack server architectures, point-of-load converters, USB-C, and LiDAR. Wireless charging, multi-level AC-DC power supplies, robotics, and solar micro inverters are example applications for the 200 V EPC2047.