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What an odd article. It talks about the move from Si switching power supplies to SiC... and now to GaN. This has been going on for years to the point that many
by kurthr 4y ago
What an odd article.
It talks about the move from Si switching power supplies to SiC... and now to GaN. This has been going on for years to the point that many new high power wall plugs are moving to GaN. It's true that EVs need power efficient supplies and drive part of the market, but I don't see evidence that they've radically accelerated the shift.
I don't see evidence that SiC or GaN supplies are noticeably more available (other than being higher margin and thus more likely to be prioritized) than Si with shipping issues and the Shanghai shutdown. I also don't see evidence that location of volume (lower margin) manufacturing are likely to be different for these SiC/GaN components until geopolitical events push them to. Certainly, component assembly is unlikely to shift to the US.
- philipkglass 4y agoIt's a bit garbled as you'd expect from a non-specialist publication, but I thought it did a decent job of highlighting recent trends in wide band gap power electronics. I think that battery electric vehicles are the "killer app" bringing silicon carbide to the mainstream. The technology itself has been developing for a long time, certainly, but BEVs combine some key attributes to drive SiC demand: - Efficiency has a high value, since a dollar's worth of SiC electronics can save more than a dollar's worth of battery capacity to reach the same driving range. Vehicle range is one of the key attributes for prospective BEV buyers. - The devices need to handle high power, which mostly rules out gallium nitride for vehicle power trains at present. - The market is large and growing rapidly, thereby justifying forward looking investments in new manufacturing capacity (like the New York fab mentioned in the article).
- nikanj 4y agoIf efficiency had high value, cars would look very different. We’ll end up repeating the same ”I’ve got a V8 F-350 for my office commute” thing with electric vehicles
- kurthr 4y agoI'll agree EVs are scaling the business since they use very large areas (roughly proportional to peak power) and they certainly have high marginal utility due to battery cost. In particular, just 1million EVs with 300kW supplies are 300GW of power supply, while 200Million mobile chargers at 80W are only 16GW of power supply area. Still, the size of the market is only ~$1B growing to $3B over the next 5 years. It's also worth noting that GaN can also be grown on SiC wafers so there is utility even when the industry shifts to even higher performance. I didn't realize that 5G base stations were also a significant consumer of GaN. https://www.yahoo.com/now/sic-wafer-market-growth-trends-100900171.html https://www.yahoo.com/now/sic-wafer-market-growth-trends-100...
- Terry_Roll 4y agoBosch opened a new fab recently. https://www.golem.de/news/halbleiterwerk-bosch-beginnt-bau-neuer-300-mm-fab-in-dresden-1804-134046.html https://www.golem.de/news/halbleiterwerk-bosch-beginnt-bau-n...