Nearly 4000 power professionals and knowledge-seekers converged at the Fort Worth Convention Center in March for the twenty-ninth annual IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC 2014). There was something for everyone it seemed, from hot topics such as high-density power supplies, wide bandgap semiconductors for power electronics applications, wireless charging for electric vehicles, advances in nanotechnology, energy harvesting and 3D packaging to standard subjects such as dc-dc converters, power factor correction, controls, and passive components. If you missed the conference, catch up by visiting the APEC site. Presentations are now available for free download. Also, don’t overlook the IEEE.tv link, where you can see live versions (keytalks) of most of the keynotes (plenary sessions) that were presented, including insights on the evolution and direction of power technology by David Freeman, CTO of Power Management at Texas Instruments, and the U.S. Department of Energy’s perspective on achieving low-cost, high-efficiency energy.
All attendees also received a USB stick which included the PowerPoint presentations from the professional education seminars as well as the formal white papers from the technical sessions -- materials which are not available on the web for general download. Access to these unpublished documents, such as the paper by Intel on “FIVR – Fully Integrated Voltage Regulators on 4th Generation Intel® Core™ SoCs”- which details the industry’s first large scale deployment of high current switching regulators integrated into a VLSI die and package (code name Haswell), alone is worth the admission price of the conference.
A slide from Dr. Krishna Shenai’s professional education seminar on wide bandgap semiconductors for power applications at APEC 2014.
Landa writes from Dallas, TX. She holds a BSEE, and has 18 years experience in the electronics industry, from tech startups to Fortune 500 companies.