Electro-ramblings

The rise in importance of consumer electronics, and the increasing relevance of environmental issues, are forcing more people to take note of the power electronics market.

According to an editorial piece on EDN, the power electronics market was worth more than $70bn last year, which is a very significant chunk of the electronics industry.

While this industry is typically thought of as providing a product that is a "necessary evil," it must be extremely important to generate that type of revenue. Instead of the "necessary evil" perception that this industry is given, power electronics is in fact the great enabler of the overall electronics industry.

Another article on EDN today looks at milestones in the power market, going back over 50 years to 1954 when Motorola's Dan Noble brought the first germanium power transistor to market.

Other milestones include the silicon controlled rectifier, or thyristor; the planar process; Carver Mead's work which led to the Schottky diode; the insulated gate bipolar transistor (IGBT) developed at General Electric; and several developments from the 1990's such as Li-ion batteries, and integrated power conversion ICs.

It's worth taking a look at EDN today, as they have contributed articles from three influential people in power: PWM controller expert Robert Mammano; Patrizio Vinciarelli, founder of Vicor and creator of the high-density dc-dc converter bricks; and Alex Lidow of International Rectifier, the first firm to successfully commercialise the Mosfet.

I know, I know - it's got bugger all to do with electronics - but I wanted to wish my daughter Charlotte a very Happy Birthday.

She's five today, although she acts about 15 most of the time and has already perfected the flounce manoeuvre back to her room!

Chipworks, the nice reverse engineering people from Canada, have an analysis blog on their site looking at how DRAM capacitors are made.

The snappy headline So you thought DRAM capacitors are made of only polysilicon and oxide or nitride...? looks at a Powerchip 512Mbit DDR2 SDRAM.

Hopefully you can see a micrograph of the device on the left.

Chipworks notes a change in construction of the stacked capacitors:

They are still made inside deep narrow holes that have been etched in inter-metal dielectrics, but their electrodes and the capacitor dielectric layer are more complex than they used to be.

Powerchip seems to have increased the surface area of their caps by using a layer of hemispherical grain (HSG) polysilicon which has formed bumps and niches - clearly visible in the image:

Since the charge stored in a capacitor can be expressed as Q = AVKε/t, where A - capacitor area, V - voltage on the capacitor, K - capacitor dielectric layer constant, ε - permittivity of vacuum, and t - capacitor dielectric layer thickness, the increased area A results in more charge being stored in the capacitor, with the same bitline voltage and the same dielectric layer thickness.

Go to the Chipworks' page for nice big images and a fuller description.

My blogging colleague Gary Nevison has posted a very interesting piece on the EuP (Energy using Products) Directive.

As a Yorkshireman he obviously calls it the 'eh up' Directive.

The Directive does not apply to means of transport (aircraft, cars etc.) but, apart from this, the scope is deliberately broad, covering, in principle, any product which when in use depends on, generates, transfers or measures energy (electricity, fossil fuel or renewable)

EuP is going to be a critical one for the electronics industry, as its scope is potentially broader than RoHS or WEEE, explains Gary:

There will also be a growing demand for more comprehensive data on energy use, composition and compatibility of materials, weight, disassembley, recyclability, identification and in some cases a move towards modular designs which can be upgraded more easily

Gary is writing a whole series of blog posts introducing various flavours of legislation that are affecting, or will affect, the electronics industry, including the ATEX Directive on equipment used in explosive atmospheres, the REACH chemicals legislation, and China's version of RoHS.

Despite the hype surrounding 'Web 2.0', calls for the demise of print publications may have been a little premature, as print remains the information source of choice for electronics engineers.

This is a conclusion from a worldwide survey run by CMP Technology's Electronics Group, which found that electronics engineers rely on four core forms of media for their information needs, with print the beating heart:

Print continues to be one of the most widely used formats in all markets, regions and age groups for three reasons: credibility, readability and news analysis.

Alongside print, engineers make heavy use of publication websites, vendor websites and search engines.

The tight inter-relationships among these "Core 4" is what makes these types of media so powerful

Beyond these four key sources of information, formats such as email, events, white papers and Webinars are gaining ground, particularly when allied around the Core 4, said CMP.

For the younger engineers - those under the age of 35 - Web 2.0 media formats (blogs, mash-ups etc) are beginning to gain ground in some regions.

There's more information (for a price presumably) from Christian Fahlen, group manager of business strategy at CMP Technology, at cfahlen@cmp.com

John Cooley has found out that another boss of a design for manufacturing EDA firm has lost his job, this time the very likable Naeem Zafar from Pyxis.

Is [sic] seems that, just like Aprio, for some unannounced reason (there's no press release nor any notice on the company web page) the founding CEO of Pyxis, Naeem Zafar, is now unexpectedly missing and he's subsequently been replaced by the Pyxis VP of Engineering, Joe Hutt.

The reference to Aprio is due to its CEO, Mike Gianfagna, giving himself the boot late last year.

Both Zafar and Gianfagna are victims of a cull that is starting in the DFM business, which is horrendously over-represented by start-ups, with firms struggling to convince EDA tool buyers to go with their tools rather than those from the big EDA players.

As Cooley cooly points out:

As an exit strategy, if Mentor doesn't buy you (because they're the only saloon in town who doesn't have a proprietary P&R tool to protect) you're screwed.

Anyway, it's a shame about Naeem, because he's one of the nicest blokes in the industry. He spent a long time at Quickturn, the emulation firm that was bought by Cadence, and was then CEO at Veridicom and SDS.

UPDATE:
Pyxis has now put out a press release on the matter, confirming the loss of Naeem, and promoting Joe Hutt to the president and CEO slots. It seems Naeem has gone on to pastures new:

Naeem Zafar, Pyxis' president and CEO from May 2005 until this month, has left the company to pursue a long-term interest in entrepreneurial development. He has joined Altair Ventures, an entry-level, high-technology investment and consulting firm that helps entrepreneurs shape their ideas into profitable companies

Thanks to the ubiquitous embargo - sometimes useful, sometimes a pain in the neck - we're sitting on a really nice story that is set to break on Monday.

I'm trying to think of clues that won't give the game away, but I can already feel the elegant hands belonging to the firm's director of public relations tightening around my throat.

What I can show you is a nice picture of a die that I took during the press conference:

If anyone can tell me roughly what the product is and why it's significant, I'll send them a prize from my drinks collection.

This competition is not open to employees of... whoops - nearly gave the game away.

Here's a close up of the die. Sorry about the poor quality, but the PR man booked a cellar room and the lighting was a bit dim.

UPDATE: I've just noticed (Thursday evening) that the embargo has already been blown by an Indian website. Oh well, never mind. At least it's not EETimes. I'm still not telling you what it is though.

Hi everyone. It's unlikely I'll post anything for a few days as I'm on a mountain leader training course in North Wales. Just in time for the sub-zero blast of weather that's heading towards the UK. Nice.