Note: This article is the transcript of a ‘virtual’ PCIM 2020 presentation from July 8th, 2020. Please see the original video presentation, PCIM press release and ‘slides only’ presentation (pdf).

Hello everyone, I’m Stephen Oliver and welcome to a ‘virtual’ PCIM 2020. I’m very happy to be with you, to show how GaN power ICs are the industry’s game-changer.

Navitas means ‘energy’ and our focus is on energy savings and bringing a new level of energy to power electronics. By exploiting the inherent high-speed performance of GaN – specifically as the world’s first GaN power IC company – we can drive efficiencies and power densities to new levels.

The key to GaN’s game-changing attack on silicon is true, monolithic integration – combining GaN FET, GaN logic and GaN analog circuits to achieve a ‘digital-in, power-out’ MHz building block.

Monolithic integration enables high-frequency power conversion and the ability to shrink passive components like transformer, EMI filters, output capacitors – to deliver solutions that can charge 3x faster in half the size and weight of old, slow, silicon solutions.

GaN is a revolutionary game-changer!

The first revolution in power started in the late 1970’s with the change from silicon bipolar to silicon MOSFETs and the change from linear to switch-mode power supplies. At the same time, new ‘integrated’ controllers and new magnetic materials enabled topologies to advance from academia to industry, and we saw a huge increase in efficiency and frequency which drove down size and cost. After that, the silicon world evolved slowly, with more and more effort for smaller and smaller returns. 40 years later, with GaNFast power ICs in mass production for over 2 years and excellent reliability – running at zero ppm field returns – we see the same revolutionary factors. New material, integration, magnetics and topologies increase efficiency and frequency so drove down size and cost again.

At the same time, we have a game-changing increase in power and charging speed demanded by the consumer. Bigger screens and more functionality mean bigger batteries, which need higher-power fast chargers – and who wants to carry around a big, bulky, slow, silicon-based charger?

So, GaN dominates in this market.

Looking at 60-65W USB-C fast charger examples, we see GaN is a game-changer yet again, removing the roadblocks to mainstream adoption. If the GaNFast-generation is half the size, half the weight and half the price of old, slow silicon – and with high reliability – there’s no stopping the GaN revolution.

The market for next-generation fast chargers is US$1B today, with a rapid adoption of GaN. For Xiaomi and Lenovo, the world’s smallest 65W chargers have been released at retail prices 50-75% lower than previous best-in-class silicon chargers.

GaN the game-changer is fast, very fast and we will see fast adoption across all markets from fast chargers to all-in-one PCs, TVs, multi-kW server, eMobility and new energy markets.

Thank you for being part of the game-changing GaNFast community.