Digital Power: Where’s the Money?

Digital has remained the primary “buzzword” in the power electronics industry for at least the last two years. Although the introduction of a number of digital control ICs has answered some questions, one question remains—Is there money in digital power?

The quick answer is, yes. As seen in Figure 1, Darnell Group’s “Emerging Market is Digital Power Electronics, Second Edition” projects that the worldwide digital power control and management IC market will reach $633 million by 2011, growing from only $42 million in 2006.

This is a five-year annualized growth rate of 72%. The primary growth catalyst will be digital loop control ICs, which account for only 32% of sales in 2006, but is expected to surge to 69% of sales by 2011. Today, the greatest share of these sales are embedded in digital Point-of-Load converters, but by 2011 over two-thirds of digital control ICs will be used in conjunction with more commoditized products, such as lighting ballasts and ac-dc power supplies.

The growth of digital power was enabled by the arrival of the 25-micron node for digital ICs. As microprocessors continue to move to sub-25-micron nodes over the next two semiconductor process lifecycles, production costs of digital power ICs will drop dramatically. This will allow digital power ICs to reach price parity with analog ICs in 2008, which will enable digital power to reach its growth inflection point in 2009.

Hitting price parity with analog solutions will be the necessary condition for digital power’s sustained growth. According to a recent survey conducted in the same report, price (defined as the implementation cost of the solution) is the most important feature that will determine the use of digital solutions. As shown in Figure 2, on a scale of one to five, with five being most important, price scored an average of 4.3. On the other hand, a pure digital solution scored only an average of 1.7.

Since digital price parity and price advantage is inevitable as manufacturing processes advance, the importance that original equipment manufacturers place on implementation cost will become the driving force pushing digital adoption.

Click here for Illustrations:

Figure 1

Figure 2