After ADI and Linear officially completed the merger in March last year, the market concentration is very high, with 80% of the market concentrated in the industrial, communications and automotive fields. This merger has increased ADI's devices from 20,000 to 43,000, of which more than 10,000 are power supplies, and there are 18 major product lines, most of which are Linear products, based on Linear's deep accumulation and advantages in the power supply field , the sub-brand of ADI's power product line is called Power by Linear. As a result, the share of ADI's power products has jumped to the second place in the world.
A few days ago, electronic enthusiasts were invited to participate in a workshop of ADI, and Mr. Liang Zaixin, director of power system engineering of ADI, a senior power technology expert, shared the company's latest products and technologies. From these products and technologies, we can see the requirements and design pain points for power products in industry applications.
Figure: Liang Zaixin, director of power system engineering at Analog Devices, a senior power technology expert
Liang Zaixin said that areas such as autonomous driving, automotive electronics, industry 4.0, next-generation communications and immersive consumer experience are all markets that ADI focuses on. Although Power by Linear has more than 10,000 devices, its product design ideas have always revolved around three key points: First, how to reduce the size and volume of the chip while providing good performance? Second, how to improve efficiency? The third is the EMI optimization related to the stability and reliability of the system.
Industrial application
In the industrial field, China's investment in semiconductor-related equipment has grown significantly this year and next. From a global perspective, the largest increase in scale is China, South Korea is slightly down, Taiwan is flat, and the United States is also flat.
Chart: Statistics on Global Semiconductor Equipment Expenditure
In addition to signal chain products, ADI is taking China's semiconductor production, testing, and packaging equipment as an important growth fulcrum for power products. "The space in these devices is very compact, so there are many opportunities for our power modules." Liang Zaixin said, "After ten years of development, our Power Modules have a very complete product range, which can be very useful to semiconductor equipment manufacturers. Good technical and product support help them complete very challenging designs, support more devices in a small space with small volume, high efficiency products."
Figure: ADI's power product line in semiconductor equipment
Silent Switcher is ADI's representative device architecture technology that solves the pain points of EMI and interference in industrial applications. Its innovative breakthrough is that the ordinary power supply is a single current loop, and the Silent Switcher is two reverse current loops, which greatly reduces the EMI level and can meet the standard without special optimization. Taking the LT8609S as an example, most EMI problems can only be achieved by using four-layer boards, six-layer boards with shielding and isolation, etc. The LT8609S can meet industrial-grade EMI standards with a standard design of two-layer boards, and there is some margin.
Figure: ADI's Silent Switcher Architecture Technology
vehicle electronics
ADI has a history of more than 25 years in the field of airbags and is a key component supplier in the field of automation and autonomous driving. Lidar, microwave radar, body measurement systems, inertial navigation and gyroscopes are the application directions of Power by Linear products.
In autonomous driving applications, noise reduction is a key. The LT3045, the industry's lowest noise launched by ADI in 2016, has a noise as low as 0.8μV, which is less than the 2.7μV noise of traditional lithium batteries, and the PSRR value below 1M reaches more than 78 dB, which can be significantly improved when supplying power to Lidar and Radar. Improved performance, overall vehicle and passenger safety has been improved due to reduced radar system noise.
Another key point is to reduce EMI interference. The Silent Switcher technology mentioned above makes the body system more stable due to the greatly reduced EMI interference, which is very beneficial for the body with highly integrated electronic devices. In addition, PoDL for automotive Ethernet, that is, Power Over Data Line technology, enables the data line to have power supply capability at the same time, thus saving a lot of cable construction and weight, improving reliability, reducing the difficulty of construction, and saving vehicle cost.
In autonomous driving applications, automotive lighting safety technology is always an important topic. The LED matrix headlights of the Audi A8 are composed of a large number of LED units. When two cars meet, the body camera can be used to determine the position of the opposite car, and the system automatically turns off part of the lights on the side of the oncoming car, making the meeting safer. This technology is provided by Power by Linear.
Figure: ADI's automotive lighting safety technology used in the Audi A8
The cruising range has always been a pain point for electric vehicles, and the battery management system BMS is the key to its optimization. ADI's related products (LTC680X series) once occupied more than 80% of the market share in China.
In the field of hybrid electric vehicles, how to solve the balance and conversion between the high-power 48-volt system and the 12-volt system is an important issue. Because the instantaneous power of the 48-volt system will be as high as ten kilowatts, it is a great challenge to safety and reliability. The LTC3871 is ADI's application solution for this pain point. The device features a bidirectional two-phase synchronous buck or boost feature. When starting the car or when additional power is required, the LTC3871 allows two batteries to simultaneously power the same load with up to 97% efficiency; at 48 volts, It can be stepped down to charge 12V systems; if necessary, 12V can also be used to supplement 48V.
Figure: LTC3871 solves the pain point of 48V system
In traditional fuel vehicle systems, power conversion losses are a problem. The traditional diode is usually used as a rectifier bridge to convert the power generation into DC power to supply power to the battery. Due to the voltage difference of the traditional diode, the greater the current, the greater the voltage difference, about 0.4 volts to 0.7 volts, and the power loss is very large. In response to this pain point, ADI developed an ideal diode bridge stack, replacing diodes with MOS tubes. Because the impedance of the MOS tube is relatively low, the efficiency can be improved, the power loss can be reduced, the bridge stack does not need a heat sink, and the reliability is also improved.
In the automotive electronic system, the high voltage at the moment of startup has always been a great challenge to safety and reliability, because the battery of the car and the entire system are becoming more and more complex, and most of the automotive electronics in the past worked under the 12-volt system Yes, under severe conditions, it is possible to reach 70 volts instantaneously, possibly breaking the components. The most common solution in the past is to add PVS tubes, but the 3000-watt and 6000-watt PVS tubes are relatively bulky, difficult to fix, and have poor stability and reliability. ADI's Surge Stopper technology completely eliminates the interfering power tip of the instantaneous pulse and controls it within the set standard range, so that the body system can avoid damage to the components on the car due to accidental interference, thereby improving safety. .
communication application
For communication system equipment suppliers such as Huawei, Cisco, Ericsson, and ZTE, 5G brings great challenges. Miniaturization, high bandwidth, and high power have put forward urgent requirements for base station equipment in terms of energy density, efficiency and reliability.
For wireless base station modules, miniaturization and high integration have high requirements for power supply, heat dissipation, efficiency and reliability performance. Therefore, in the design of the POE scheme, not only should the power supply be supplied through the network cable, but also how to improve the power density should be considered. Taking the FPGA's 0.8V core voltage and 100A output current as an example, the ADI power module needed 12 pieces of LTM4601 to achieve 100A in 2010. After 3 iterations, the latest LTM4700 can achieve 100A with only 1 piece!
Based on the iteration of the packaging process, the LTM4700 has a built-in heat sink, which moves the inductor from the module to the module to help dissipate heat. The inductor can effectively remove heat from the air, and its heat dissipation performance is better than discrete solutions.
Figure: The LTM4700 is only the size of a thumb and about the same thickness as a pencil
Unlike wireless, wired devices require the application of hot swap, high conversion efficiency, and power management PSM. In addition, due to the very high temperature of the central office equipment, efficiency optimization is very important. The efficiency of traditional power supplies reaches 93% and 94%, and it is difficult to improve. On the communication backplane, when 48V is turned down, the conversion efficiency is often not high. How to solve this pain point?
ADI's approach is to optimize the problem of inductive losses. The LTC7820 is a fixed-ratio high-voltage high-power switched capacitor. It uses CFLY (flying capacitor) to replace the inductance with relatively large losses in the past. The module with a thickness of 2.8×2.8 cm and 6 mm can push about 500W of power from 48V to 24V. The efficiency is in 99% or so. This device embodies an innovative idea: to convert 48 volts to 24 volts through a very efficient circuit, and then turn the remaining board-level system down, which not only simplifies the design, but also solves the bottleneck of traditional circuits.
Figure: LTC7820 replaces inductor with CFLY to improve conversion efficiency
The rapid growth of the optical communication market in China is driving the development of optical modules. Volume is the biggest challenge in optical module design. For example, ADI's LTM4622 and LTM4624 are 6.25mm × 6.25mm × 1.8mm power modules, which have been widely used.
Liang Zaixin said that, in general, the requirements for product design of communication power modules are mainly in three directions: one is high power, such as an output current of 100A, ADI is already developing the next generation; the other is small size, ADI is already developing 4mm ×4mm products; the third is to make them thinner, such as 1.8mm, 1.5mm or even thinner. It is a big challenge to integrate MOS tubes, inductors and other devices in such a thin space. Using a multi-layer substrate as a module is ADI's unique method, which solves the problems of high-density wiring, heat dissipation, and multi-component packaging for small-volume devices.
wood craving machine servo motor
Zhejiang Synmot Electrical Technology Co., Ltd , https://www.synmot-electrical.com