Power firm gets wafers in Europe

“We have qualified ZMD in Dresden and will get production wafers this quarter,” said Balu Balakrishnan, founder and CEO of PI. Most of PI’s products use 3µm processes, though its newest products are being made on a 1.5µm process.

Previously PI had sourced all its wafers at Oki and Matsushita. It has licensed Matsushita to sell power supply chips based on PI technology into the Japanese market only. That is the only licence PI has granted, and it is normally very protective of its proprietary technology.

“Yesterday (October 20th) we sued Fairchild for infringing a number of our patents,” said Balakrishnan, adding, “Infineon unsuccessfully challenged our patents in Europe.” PI is also suing System General for alleged patent infringement.

Governments around the world are helping PI’s sales by insisting on standards for standby power that are becoming increasingly stringent and are, in some cases, unattainable by conventional transformers.

In 2001, President Bush ordered that all PCs bought by the US Government should have less than 1W of standby power. “To meet 1W you pretty much have to have our technology,” claimed Balakrishnan. Dell, HP and IBM have all adopted PI technology in their PC power supplies.

As well as the US, other countries with energy efficient standards include, Japan, China, Korea, the EC and Australia. “Everything is moving our way. The government should be paying us to be in business,” cracked Balakrishnan.

This year, for the first time, the consumer market will be PI’s biggest market segment. The firm has produced a software tool which allows its customers to design all the critical elements of a power supply themselves.

Asked if there would ever be a one-size-fits-all power supply for portable consumer products, Balakrishnan replied: “I hope not. Because we want to sell more power supplies.”

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