Vicor: Future factor

Vicor believes its innovative architecture is the way of the future in power-supply systems.

By Terrence Lynch -- Movers & Shakers, 11/1/2004

Vicor is leading a revolution in power-supply system design. The company's Factorized Power Architecture (FPA), introduced last year, is gaining traction as the electronics industry moves toward multivoltage, deep-submicron circuits, and the shortcomings of conventional supplies become clearer. It also promises to break the boundaries of high-performance electronics beyond the IT and communications markets.

Patrizio Vinciarelli, Chairman, President, and CEO, Vicor

"One of the key differences we're making is that we've undertaken an in-depth review of what power systems in general require in multiple markets," says Patrizio Vinciarelli, Vicor's chairman, president, and CEO, "and through factorized power come up with both an architecture and power-conversion building blocks that we believe provide optimized solutions without compromises."

Supplying electric power to circuits used to be easy. Centralized supply systems worked well until multivoltage, distributed-architecture circuits emerged. Distributed supplies met that challenge, but the "brick" transformers (introduced, by the way, by Vicor some 20 years ago) are proving too large and too slow for many of today's portable, high-speed designs.

The currently acceptable power-supply model, the intermediate-bus architecture, uses non-isolated buck regulators at point-of-load. The design works for many applications, says Vinciarelli, but it suffers from high ripple, poor transient response, low power density, and other unfavorable performance measures.

"Much of the emphasis is on achieving the most efficient solution at the point-of-load, which neglects all kinds of other essential aspects of the power system," he says. "It is not achieving success in the long term, in terms of developing something that has got longevity and reach. That's what we're trying to do [with the FPA]."

FPA delivers the three main attributes desirable in a power supply: Isolation, regulation, and voltage conversion. It divides those jobs between two chips, a power-regulation module (PRM) and an isolated voltage-transformation module (VTM). PRMs use a zero-voltage switching buck-boost converter, details of which are only slowly emerging. VTMs use a new design called a sine-amplitude converter, comprising proprietary zero-voltage and zero-current switching (ZVS and ZCS) technologies. The VTM design allows efficient conversion at several million cycles per second while minimizing serial energy storage.

The system promises efficiencies greater than 95 percent, operating at 4 MHz, with power density as high as 1 kilowatt per cubic inch and current density as high as 100 amps in the same volume. It features greatly reduced conducted and radiated EMI and an extraordinarily low ripple of 1 percent—even lower with the addition of a ceramic bypass capacitor. No other power-supply technology comes close, Vinciarelli says.

FPA is available in a family of products Vicor calls V•I Chip bus-converter modules. Initial products include 48-volt models with outputs of 48 volts at 300 watts of power, 9.6 volts at 240 watts, and 12 volts at 200 watts.

Asked whether factorized power will change the way products are designed, Vinciarelli responds positively. "It will be a progressive change," he says. "But I think that for a number of fundamental reasons that relate back to the laws of physics...this is the right way of distributing power and processing it both in off-line applications and in point-of-load applications at high and low voltages and going from high voltages, which is the nature of the power-system challenge."

Although FPA is in its infancy, it has attracted considerable attention in the major electronics centers around the world. Beyond IT and telecom markets, FPA may find important applications in consumer electronics, automotive and transportation, and other major markets.

The result of this attention is an improving financial picture for Vicor. "We've gone from significant losses to essentially break-even over the last year," Vinciarelli says. "We continue to make significant investments in R&D and new-product developments."

As a percentage of revenue, R&D at Vicor hovers in the low to mid-teens. Such commitment to innovation is part of the company's strategy for success.

Although the company has facilities worldwide, it is also committed to maintaining its American character. "The way you succeed in the long term is by resigning yourself to a competitive disadvantage in terms of being able to do business in the US, from a US base, but leveraging the creativity and the capabilities of an American company."

Vicor wants to be the company that charts the industry's course ahead in terms of power. "We think the right solution in the medium and long term is to have enough creativity and innovation to build great opportunities for the company," Vinciarelli says. "I think that we have an absolute determination to innovate to lead the way. We want to use innovation as a way forward."