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INTRODUCTION
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A special supplement to EDN
Published October 22, 2009
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Power-industry overview
By Margery Conner, Technical Editor
Last year was the first since 2000 that the semiconductor industry’s revenues dropped. The power-management-IC segment, however, bucked the trend by eking out a 1% gain. Likewise, the decidedly unglamorous power-transistor and -diode segment, already at almost $15 billion, promises to continue to grow. |
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FEATURES
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Power transistors and diodes
By Margery Conner, Technical Editor
Power transistors and diodes are the workhorses of the semiconductor industry: Without them, you cannot move or transform any significant amount of electrical energy. The servers populating enormous data farms, white goods with their newly efficient motors, hybrid-electric cars, and home theaters rely on power transistors and diodes that switch and manage their power requirements. |
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Power-management ICs
By Margery Conner, Technical Editor
Reflecting the worldwide economic recession, the semiconductor industry last year showed its first revenue drop since 2000. However, although total semiconductor-industry revenue for 2008 declined by 5.4% to $255 billion, the market for power-management ICs grew 1% from $8411 million to $8473 million. |
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Digital power
By Margery Conner, Technical Editor
Last year, EDN's power supplement discussed the still-young digital-power market in terms of overall market potential for digital controllers. Digital power has now matured to the point at which Gartner breaks out products by application type. |
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Solar energy: photovoltaics
By Alfonso Velosa III, Gartner
After years of double-digit growth, the modern incarnation of the solar industry has run into its first major market cycle. Limited credit, jittery customers, and currency fluctuations have severely hit PV (photovoltaic) vendors. |
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PV-industry power shifts downstream
By Alfonso Velosa III, Gartner
As the economic crisis spread on a global basis, the industry dynamics in 2008 shifted significantly. Early in the year, PV (photovoltaic) solar-cell supply could not meet demand. Looking up the supply chain for PV cells, supply of polysilicon was the critical gating factor for manufacturing PV solar cells. |
