Green efficiency is the constant theme of electronic products, and power supply IC has always played a very important role in it. Due to low power portable product proliferation, energy conservation and environmental protection requirements, the requirement of power management are also growing, now, such as panel driver IC, household appliances, LED lighting driver IC, charging device has become an important area for the power IC, such as how to through the low-power design in order to reduce power consumption, and more lightweight and low cost has become a diligent direction of the manufacturers. This is a big responsibility for the power IC.
As PI company in high voltage integrated circuit technology innovation, realize the small size, compact structure, used in a variety of electronic products of high efficiency power supply, including used in LED lighting, cell phone chargers, computer, LCD TV, DVD player, set-top boxes, home appliances, telecommunications network equipment and other more efficient power supply applications. Such as PI, the CONCEPT of IGBT drive can improve the efficiency of high power application, reliability, and cost efficiency, its application areas including industrial motor, electric cars, solar and wind power system and high voltage direct current transmission, etc. Since its introduction in 1998, PI's EcoSmart energy saving technology has saved billions of dollars in energy consumption and avoided millions of tons of carbon emissions.
Doug Bailey, vice President of global marketing for PI, said standby power has become a big driver in the industry. Because many devices are always in a "power" state, devices that use very little power in sleep mode are very attractive when considering battery life. This may require the power IC to work in a variety of different modes so that IC can perform work in a more efficient manner when the device is not in use and when it is fully operational.
Energy efficiency regulations drive the development of power products.
The efficient use of electricity has become a development trend, and solutions that can improve efficiency, reduce power demand or extend battery life will play an important role in the future. And the energy efficiency standards in the world is in constant evolution, electronics manufacturers need to under the condition of the premise of meet the national standards, has the higher efficiency of power supply products, to win market recognition.
Under specification and government agencies to promote, each power supply manufacturers are actively develop innovative solutions that can improve efficiency, specific requirements including reducing standby power consumption, improve the work efficiency and power factor, etc. Doug, says Mr Bailey, all laws and regulations of energy efficiency worldwide to almost can think of all kinds of products (from the television set to air conditioning products, mobile handheld devices, to the electric rice cooker, electric toothbrush, and lighting system) of the manufacturer is mandatory binding, asking them to meet the increasingly stringent power limit. That means designers must look for more energy-efficient power designs. Some of the IC products introduced by Power IntegraTIons are the most energy-efficient in the market, enabling them to easily meet all international regulations.
The future power supply management system will be more and more demanding for efficiency and reliability, which requires the designer to accurately grasp the market dynamics and regulatory requirements and timely innovate the power plan.
The rise of portable devices puts forward new requirements for power management.
One of the most important growth opportunities at the moment is in mobile devices. By the battery power of mobile equipment has a high requirement on the battery charge and discharge management, and must be compact, high efficiency and low cost, this lead to mobile power management technologies in smaller silicon chip integrated more functions at the same time at a higher design flexibility to achieve better system performance, without any increase in costs. In the future, the development of mobile power management products will revolve around energy saving and consumption reduction. It is changing the traditional power design method to speed up the design cycle of power supply, improve the power consumption, improve energy efficiency and reduce the size of the board area.
In addition, almost any consumer devices powered by batteries color with active matrix LCD to display different information and data according to user's requirements, the challenge for the manufacturer is, in any environment to ensure that users can read information from the display. To achieve this, manufacturers must provide color LCDS with appropriate backlighting. This backlighting is usually provided by white leds. This leads to the need for compact, efficient and low-noise methods to power these leds.
With the development of electronic technology, especially the popularization of portable products and the promotion of energy-saving and environmental protection, the power IC plays an increasingly important role. A few years ago, the power IC are integrated voltage regulator and DC/DC converters, but now the power IC covers a lot of content, including AC/DC, DC/DC, "(low dropout linear regulator), battery charging and discharging management, PWM controller, Reset, PFC (power factor correction), energy-saving control, power MOSEFT and so on. The current development trend of power IC is not limited to single function, but integrates various functions together, and the integration trend is obvious.
'our growing dependence on mobile devices is another factor driving the development of power IC,' says Doug Bailey, vice President of global marketing at PI. Today, users are heavily reliant on smartphones for more than just phone calls, and they don't want to wait four hours or more to recharge their phones. Qualcomm and other mobile chip companies are rolling out new fast charging protocols, which has led the power IC manufacturers to rethink the solutions they offer.
All these factors together, for the power IC manufacturers put forward the new challenge, and it is also a great opportunity, it is creating a new generation of high integration, high performance and highly efficient power chips.