(Credit: TI)- Trends are often driven by some need that is not fully satisfied. This could range from fashion to entertainment to politics to even power management. Once a trend is recognized, opportunities for innovation kick off. Some trends have short lives, while others live for decades.

Trends in power have very long lives, perhaps because of the technical difficulties associated with new power-management technologies or the conservative nature of power-management industry. But just because a trend has been around, it doesn’t mean we should remain comfortable. A trend is no longer a trend when there are no more opportunities for innovation; however, a dormant trend can always be restarted when a technology enables new innovation. There are differences between trends and the technology that enables them.

Growing trends in power management include:

• Power efficiency.
• Power density.
• Energy harvesting.
• Digitally controlled power.
• Power-management tools for rapid design success.
• Wide V_IN power.
• High integration.
• Smart power.
•  

You will certainly find examples of innovations within these trends at the 2015 Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC) in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Let’s focus on three of what I believe are the most significant trends where we will see the fastest innovation growth:

• Higher power density.
• Smart power.
• Energy harvesting.

Power density

Power density is almost like the “arms race” of the 1980s, with many companies spending their R&D dollars to take the lead. These companies are pulling out all the stops to process the most power in the least volume. Yet this trend brings many challenges, such as new topologies (bridgeless power factor correction), higher switching frequencies and of course improved power efficiency. In a supporting role, we have new technologies: wide-bandgap (WBG) devices such as gallium nitride (GaN) and silicon carbide (SiC) switching devices. We also need to support the ecosystem for this trend, which includes faster drivers and controllers that can manage the capabilities of the drivers and switching devices. Drivers with a sub-10ns minimum pulse width and even shorter propagation delays play a key role in enabling the technologies that support higher power-density trends. Many demonstrations of higher power density use high-performance digital-power controllers that do not consume much power themselves. These controllers need to have very fine edge control, as well as very fast data converters for loop control. Additionally, they also need circuits that can quickly calculate the response in time for the next switching cycle. So it is easy to see how significant improvements in power density are fertile grounds for innovation.

Smart power

Smart power is a major trend that addresses system efficiency by having the system manage the power subsystem. In the past, the power subsystem pretty much managed itself. Power designers could configure the supply for sequencing, soft start and stop, and fault-detection response based on the system requirements, but that was more of an initialization. Today’s systems demand much more real-time cooperation between the power subsystem and primary system. Industry interfaces like PMBus help with the standardization of interface and data protocols, but the real benefits come when the system and power supply cooperate. The system often knows in advance when it is going to change modes of activity that will require a change to power-system operation. Sharing this information with the power system allows the power supply to respond appropriately.

The big opportunities for innovation will come when the system and power subsystem can communicate at a much higher level. Today’s systems use dynamic voltage scaling (DVS), where the system tells the power subsystem to change the output voltage. Although this method is effective, so much more can be done. Communicating more information at a higher level can give more information to the multidimensional power supply, which better meets the needed response. Mixed-signal process technology provides designers opportunities for optimum partitioning. Power integrated circuit (IC) designers can closely couple the digital smarts with the optimum analog circuits. This allows integrated power converters to address the need for a smarter power subsystem to more easily cooperate with the main system. Future devices will accelerate this trend of addressing total system efficiency.

Energy harvesting

Energy-harvesting trends are key enablers to the Internet of Things (IoT). Many IoT devices rely on innovation in wireless connectivity, but to be really effective they need power that does not require wires. Batteries can certainly power the IoT, but then their replacement becomes an issue. Harvesting energy from the environment would be great as long as it provides all of the power needed. Harvesting environmental energy provides many opportunities for innovation. Improving the efficiency of the energy collector is an area under much investigation, but managing this energy is just as important. Environmental energy is not all that stable, so the energy must be stored in times of plenty for the times of little. In doing so, the energy-harvesting management unit should consume as little energy as possible.

Another aspect of IoT is that in order to minimize total energy needs, the peak-to-average power requirements are extreme; often more than 1,000 to 1. The energy-management unit needs to be able to handle these demands with very low latency while still consuming very little energy.

I would like to know your perspective on trends in power management, or the technologies that you think will start new trends or restart old trends. The list above includes my thoughts, and some of these trends will certainly have more activity than others.  It doesn’t seem like it, but it was a decade ago that digital power control became a popular power-management trend and fueled many APEC conversations. It wasn't that it was a totally new trend, but it was restarted by innovations in process technology, where high-performance digital circuits could be integrated with high-performance analog circuits on the same die. We may see the same in areas where high-performance passives can be economically integrated in IC packaging.

It may be hard to tell if something is the chicken or the egg. Does technology start a trend or does a trend drive technology? I think it would be interesting to discuss this at APEC. One point is clear; we can no longer rely on long-lasting trends that patiently wait for innovation. Examples like Google’s Little Box Challenge show that if we don’t push innovation in our industry, others will.

TI at APEC

At APEC 2015, we plan to highlight several advancements in digital power and GaN technology and debut sophisticated new tools that help speed the design of power supplies for industrial, smart grid and automotive applications. Here are several demonstrations that will be on display in TI’s booth (No. 1001):

• Digital power: dynamic synchronous rectification control, end-to-end PMBus point-of-load DC/DC solutions, hardware and graphical software tools for digital power configuring and modeling, and tools for converting solar energy into electricity.

• DC/DC: wide V_IN multirail power made simple with SIMPLE SWITCHER® nano modules and synchronous regulators, as well as automotive start-stop power.
• LED lighting: an efficient, step-down, high-power LED driver with strobe and synchronization for fire alarms.
• WEBENCH® power design tools and the TI Designs reference design library. TI will offer a USB stick to attendees with reference designs for many of the demos in the booth.

Some of our power experts will also present at technical sessions, including two focused on the impact of wide-bandgap power devices and how TI is making GaN technology more reliable.

For more information and to follow TI throughout APEC, see http://www.ti.com/apec15.

The following is a list of TI speakers, and presentation times:

- Dave Freeman -