Check out our APEC 2023 digital magazine for more show coverage.
When I was a much younger editor, I covered segments of the OEM electronics industry that were a lot less exotic than the wireless world. We’re talking things like components and packaging, interconnects, passives, wire and cable—real nuts-and-bolts stuff. Sometimes, even, actual nuts and bolts or other fasteners.
Exotic to me, back in the day, were things like flip chips and ball-grid arrays and concepts related to 3D packaging. And, not infrequently, I’d find myself talking to purveyors of items like dc-dc converters or other board-level, power-related products. Such elements of system design were almost as ho-hum to me as toroids.
A frequent line of discussion with power-supply people was how often power was overlooked by system designers. I’d hear cautionary, and possibly apocryphal, anecdotes about designers who’d approach power-supply apps engineers with serious last-minute problems: “I needed X watts of output on this bus, but the board layout left very little space on the board for the supply. I’m really stuck. Can you possibly come up with a custom device that will do the job?”
The point of these tales was that in any context, overlooking board- or system-level power requirements is a critical mistake. All too often, though, power was one of the last things considered. A power supply that’s not up to the task of responding to dynamic load changes can wreak untold havoc with digital logic, causing false switching and/or timing problems. Thus, it behooves designers to always have power in mind during the course of a project, rather than treat it as an afterthought.
Fortunately, great resources are available to help designers learn about the latest developments in power electronics. One of them is the annual Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC), happening this week at the Orange County Convention Center in Orlando (March 19-23, 2023). Power-electronics professionals will converge on APEC for a smorgasbord of workshops, technical sessions, seminars, and social events that focus on one thing and one thing only: power.
At APEC, you will find professional education seminars that delve into practical aspects of complex power-electronics topics, adding in theory to further designers’ education. There’s a full slate of technical sessions with peer-reviewed presentations covering highly innovative technical solutions. At the exhibitor seminars, industry vendors will update attendees on new products or initiatives in the power-electronics arena.
And, of course, you can’t miss the exposition itself, with hundreds of vendors serving the power-electronics industry showing off the latest and greatest in technology and solutions. They’re eager and waiting to help you solve all of your power-related problems, including that space on a PCB that’s too small for so many watts of output.
We’ll be at APEC, too, canvassing the show floor to catch up with what’s new in the power-electronics space. You can find our existing and continuing coverage of the event in a special digital magazine on our website.
Check out our APEC 2023 digital magazine for more show coverage.