Power Supply

Nearly every type of electronic product incorporates some type of power supply. It may be a battery, AC-DC converter, switchmode power supply or other type of device. The stability and reliability of the power supply is of critical importance to product performance, maintenance costs and customer satisfaction. Factors of concern are battery life, safe operating area of power transistors, efficiency, the performance of soft-start circuits, dynamic on-resistance, emitted/conducted EMI, response to changes in load and robustness in non-standard operating conditions such as power surges.

Communications

Communications products range from wireless devices to broadband networks and fiber-optic transmission lines. Though data speeds and encoding standards vary, all of these applications are driven by the need to accurately transmit and receive complex data streams. Emerging trends for transmission of video, audio and other complex sources of information—as quickly as possible—will continue to drive both the clock speed of communications protocols and the need for encoding methods that allow efficient data transmission.

Microprocessors

Devices ranging from automobiles to refrigerators and computers have a microprocessor as the ”brains” of their control system. These devices may be low speed, inexpensive chips or the latest high-cost, high-speed semiconductors. The functioning of the microprocessor is key to system performance and reliability. In general, the microprocessor needs to handle incoming instructions/data and send the proper responses back to the product in which it is embedded. As the level of demand grows for more sophisticated computations or for faster system operation, microprocessor speed increases and the complexity of tasks handled by the CPU also goes up.