News: Microelectronics
11 February 2021
Keysight and Transphorm create power supply reference design
Electronic design automation (EDA) software provider Keysight Technologies Inc of Santa Rosa, CA, USA and Transphorm Inc of Goleta, near Santa Barbara, CA, USA — which designs and manufactures JEDEC- and AEC-Q101-qualified 650V and 900V gallium nitride (GaN) field-effect transistors (FETs) for high-voltage power conversion applications — have announced the availability of a new power supply reference design that enables engineers to identify and correct design errors before building hardware, thereby lowering product costs and speeding time to market.
Switched-mode power supplies (SMPS) provide greater efficiency, increased power density and lower overall system costs when using GaN devices. However, as a high-switching-speed, high-performance wide-bandgap semiconductor, GaN can produce voltage spikes that result in detrimental radiated electromagnetic interference (EMI). Optimized layout design and placement of components before building hardware is hence critical when using GaN.
Available with Keysight’s PathWave Advanced Design System, the new power supply reference design is a virtual prototype based on Transphorm’s 4kW high-efficiency single-phase AC-DC conversion evaluation board. It consists of the component and board models needed for engineers to visualize and optimize the time and frequency domains’ behavior of voltages, currents and electromagnetic fields.
“The need for switch-mode power supplies is driving rapid adoption of wide-bandgap semiconductors,” notes Tom Lillig, general manager of Keysight’s PathWave Software Solutions division. “The new reference design of Transphorm’s high-voltage GaN solution will speed time to market of this technology, which is changing how the world powers electronic products,” he adds.
Keysight’s PathWave ADS software provides pre-compliance analysis via a virtual prototype that ensures the intended design configuration performs as intended, eliminating the need to build a virtual workspace. Virtual prototypes are complementary to physical prototypes, which are the gold standard for compliance and measured characteristics. However, they can also be expensive and present physical challenges to certain in-house test & measurement protocols. Virtual prototypes are easy to change and can flag device overstress as warning messages during simulation. The voltage, current and fields can be monitored and corrected at every time step in the simulation. All data is available for analysis including inside a semiconductor package.
“Transphorm looks for partnerships that help our customers close skill gaps, increase design simplicity and reduce time to market,” says Philip Zuk, Transphorm’s VP of worldwide technical marketing & North American sales. “With proper modeling, analysis of any design type prior to physical prototyping is a useful resource. Teaming with Keysight enables us to bring our 4kW AC-DC power conversion board into a virtual design environment that will be advantageous to product designers.”
Transphorm Keysight EDA software Power electronics
