Semiconductors and the drive toward energy efficiency

With capabilities of all applications increasing in complexity and features, the energy consumption rates seen are increasing at a staggering rate. The need to improve energy efficiency of our systems continuously increases and can easily be seen in the power consumed in every day applications such as computers, automobiles, and smart phones. Services such as Google today consume 0.01% of the world´s electricity amounting to 260 million watts. In this presentation, the trends and challenges for semiconductor companies are discussed in meeting the need to improve energy efficiency. From the development of the first transistor, to the integrated circuit, and then to the present and future where we need to view applications as whole systems and how interactions occur with them. Silicon densities continue to increase, while footprint sizes decrease. Solving power problems is no longer just a single silicon solution and improving power dissipation is no longer just adding a heat-sink. New technologies from silicon processes, IP development, 3D packaging, and software are now employed in order to create solutions which drive higher levels of efficiency and improved energy efficiency. Companies such as ZMDI has been a large part of driving improvements in energy efficiency for the past 50 years and are now a recognized mixed signal system solutions provider in the Sensing and Power Management markets partnered with major customers who drive a large portion of the world´s energy demands. We explore an example of how power systems have improved and how the drive for ever increasing energy efficiency has driven the solutions from discrete analog applications to complete digital power systems integrated with software.