Design Help Links

Power Supplies

BIAS Power Technology Inc. offers standby power supplies with UL, CE and VDE certification, providing 1/4 and 1/2 watt standby power at 50%+ efficiency

ON Semiconductor's PWM Current-Mode Controller allows designers to build extremely efficient low-cost AC/DC wall adapters

SMPS Technology offers switching power supply "design problems, solutions, tutorials, tips, and resources"

TinySwitch technology (Power Integrations) enables a new class of compact, energy efficient power supplies

GreenChips (Philips Semiconductors), used in power supplies of TVs and VCRs, reduce standby power by up to 99%

Battery Chargers

The ACTivator (Advanced Charger Technology) uses patented Dynamic Electrochemical Waveform™ technology to analyze the battery and determine its condition. The ACTivator's intelligent software continuously adjusts the charging current to perform the optimum charge for the battery.

The Optimizer 2000 Series (Alexander) offers many features to determine a battery's full charging point. The unit charges Ni-Cd and Ni-MH (3-12 cell), Lead Acid (3-9 cell) and Lithium-Ion (1-5 cell) battery packs.

The BF1107 (Philips) is a low-cost RF switch for VCRs that passes the antenna signal to the TV set without any supply voltage, so that the VCR need be switched on only when in use.

Smart Transistors (ORNL) retain information without power.

SMP430 Ultra-low-power Microcontrollers (Texas Instruments) consume only about 4 microwatts (1.3 microAmps) in standby mode.

MoBL^TM SRAMs (Cypress Semiconductor) use up to 90% less power than standard low-power SRAMs

Copper-Based Chips (IBM) are smaller and require less power than aluminum-based chips

OLEDs at COMDEX (Kodak/Sanyo) Kodak and Sanyo partner up to show OLED prototypes at COMDEX 2000

OLED breakthrough (Princeton University) promises brighter, more efficient OLED displays

30-inch LCD TV (Sharp) available in the U.S. in 2000

42-inch LCD displays (Samsung) are currently in the design stage

Active-Matrix OLEDs (Kodak, Sanyo) promise to be thinner and consume about half the power of a backlit LCD.

Digital Paper (E Ink, Lucent Technologies) is expected to be thinner and cost less than LCDs.

Chip Design

The Behavioral Compiler from Synopsis now has power optimization that promises power savings of 20-25%

WattSmith and Watt Watcher (Sente) are power estimation software tools that can be used to optimize power efficiency at the chip level

Power Management

Instantly Available PCs (Intel) use only 5 watts in sleep mode and are instantly available (no boot time) on user or network signals

Magic Packet technology (Advanced Micro Devices) allows a computer in deep sleep mode to wake up when it receives a network signal