Three hot topics at APEC: Switching FETS (duh), PoE, and power conversion/management ICs

A sampling of new products and technologies from this week's APEC show in Anaheim:

Discrete semiconductors, of course – APEC is the show where MOSFETs shine. In no particular order:

Faichild bundled the driver with the FET switch in the FDMF8700 multi-chip module for use in high-current (up to 30A at 1-1.2V) buck applications supporting Intel's DrMOS Vcore DC-DC converter standard.

Toshiba is sampling a new family of high-speed switching MOSFETs suing the company's UMOS-V process technology. The 11 initial members of the family at 30V n-channel single MOSFETs with low RDS (on).

Infineon – Infineon demo'd both its 30V OptiMOS 3 power semis and CoolMOS CP series that it introduced at the end of last year.

Vishay introduced its SKYFET MOSFET technology which integrates a Schottky diode into the FET, increasing switching speed and lowering parasitics associated with an external diode. Vishay also introduced 3 flavors of OR-ing MOSFET for redundant applications.

Power over Ethernet (PoE):

Power Integrations has a new DC-DC converter IC DPA422-426 for 10W Power-over-Ethernet (PoE) applications. Andy Smith, product marketing manager for Power Integrations DPA-Switch family says to look for an opdate to the PoE standard in the second half of the year that will boost the allowable device power from 10W to 30W, and, he predicts, result in a surge in PoE device sales.

ICs for power control/management:

Micrel joins Power-One's Z-One alliance with a line of LDO regulators. Its MIC68400(.pdf) family targets FPGAs, DSPs and microcontrollers that require a controlled start-up profile. The plus of going with a control protocol like Z-One is thatit requires no intelligence in the LDO – in its simplest form it's just an enable pin.

Intersil -intros a PMBus-compliant PWM controller, the ISL8601, with integrated MOSFET drivers. Tech marketing manager Zaid Salman is bullish on the PMBus, pointing to Intel's recent joining as a further validation of the open standard. The chip supports power-up/down protocols such as sequencing, tracking and ratiometric tracking – you hardware-select the protocolvthroug external passives components. The chips can also be daisy-chained to sequentially power-up/down.

Up next: Power Control ICs – stay tuned…