Rainier Client Coverage & Content

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Electronic Design: Fuel-Cell-Powered Drones to Fly Long-Duration Humanitarian, Commercial Missions

Fuel-Cell-Powered Drones to Fly Long-Duration Humanitarian, Commercial Missions

Applying several innovative technologies and techniques, Doosan built a hydrogen-fuel-cell drone that could literally change the course for expanded-range drone usage. The onboard power electronics architecture - made possible by Vicor - was a critical design element.

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Power Electronic Tips: Super-efficient power converters help hovering drones take flight

Super-efficient power converters help hovering drones take flight

DPI’s tethered multirotor drones are designed to follow ships, boats, trucks, and other unmanned ground/surface vehicles, offering several benefits over fixed-wing drones, including vertical takeoff/landing capabilities, and the ability to achieve persistent, stationary positioning – even during inclement weather. Power system design is crucial to the development of these helicopter-like drones.

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Power Systems Design: Fixed Ratio Converters Boost Battery Powered Systems

Fixed Ratio Converters Boost Battery Powered Systems

Fixed-ratio converters have power density, efficiency and flexibility attributes that can enable higher-performing power delivery networks (PDNs). Unlike more popular, mainstream regulated DC-DC converters, fixed-ratio converters allow designers to architect and optimize their PDN for higher system performance.

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Embedded Computing Design: Embedded Executives - Patrick Wadden, Global VP, Automotive Business Development, Vicor

Embedded Executives: Patrick Wadden, Global VP, Automotive Business Development, Vicor

Decentralized power is a phenomenon that’s starting to hit the automotive sector. Is it better to have lower power levels in more places in the car, as opposed to one centralized place?

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Embedded Computing Design: How Increasing Power and Advanced Cooling Techniques Are Converging for AI, Supercomputing and Cloud Data Centers

How Increasing Power and Advanced Cooling Techniques Are Converging for AI, Supercomputing and Cloud Data Centers

Where previously these markets were regarded as distinct entities, recent history has shown us that when it comes to power and cooling, they have more in common than previously thought.

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EDN: Power supply management in quantum computers

Power supply management in quantum computers

In 2016, the first quantum computers were able to be programmed from a high level user interface to run arbitrary quantum algorithms. The design architectures were small in scale, with just a handful of qubits each. Some of the big players like IBM, Google, Microsoft, as well as several start-ups have an ultimate goal to create a larger scale device of commercial viability sometime in the near future.

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TreeHugger: 48 Volts DC is the new 12 Volts DC.

48 Volts DC is the new 12 Volts DC.

Could it also be the new 120 Volts AC? ...whenever I talk about Direct Current vs Alternating current I come away singed and shocked by the comments, like my last one, where even fans noted, "This is about the most wrong article I've seen you write, Lloyd." But to this day, I do not understand why we have a system where every single light bulb now has to have a little transformer and rectifier to feed it DC, and almost everything we plug into the wall now has a transformer brick on it. Our domestic world now pretty much runs on DC.

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Military Embedded Systems: Mission-critical power start-up demands perfect performance every time

Mission-critical power start-up demands perfect performance every time

Design of a mission-critical, rapid-start, isolated power system needs to be flawless. These systems, leveraged in mission-critical military applications, need to start in milliseconds - every time.

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EDN: Meeting the power demands of battery supplied automotive electronics

Meeting the power demands of battery supplied automotive electronics

Have you driven a new automobile recently?  It can be an almost futuristic experience, with sophisticated gauges, touch screens, connected entertainment systems, and lighting—all of which need power. Behind all these electronics are battery regulators and battery chargers that manage the power both into and out of 12V, 24V, and 48V batteries. Each year the ‘must have’ list of supported accessories and electronic systems grows with the expectation that the size, weight and number of supporting power components will keep pace with the increased power demands.

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Electronic Products: PCIM 2017 in a nutshell

PCIM 2017 in a nutshell

It was the year that saw the evolution of wide-bandgap technology and its uptake by design engineers into actual products. Yes, there are concerns that SiC is more expensive at the device level than Si but that’s not true at the system level when the frequency is increased from 10 kHz to 40 kHz, according to Infineon. Automotive appeared to be the primary target for most wideband gap devices, but certainly there were plenty of products that targeted photovoltaics, EV charging, traction control, and motor drives.

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EDN: Data center next generation power supply solutions for improved efficiency

Data center next generation power supply solutions for improved efficiency

“Ok Google: How do I power a Data Center?”

Claude Shannon started it all when he wrote "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" in 1948 in which he reduced the communication of information to 1s and 0s, essentially binary digits. That theory led to the ability to transmit data without error in the noise-filled environment of the real world. Shannon would have been 100 years old on April 30, 2016.


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EDN: Top 10 must-have innovations for power designers from APEC 2016

Top 10 must-have innovations for power designers from APEC 2016

In this slideshow, I will be providing power designers with, what I consider, the top 10 new innovative products and architectures announced at APEC 2016. I view these following slides as essential to designers for near-term design needs as well as additions to a designer’s portfolio for future designs. Please watch for in-depth technical articles on these 10 items in the coming weeks authored by me on EDN.

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Electronic Design: APEC Opens with a Blizzard of Product Disclosures

APEC Opens with a Blizzard of Product Disclosures

After the past couple of months, the term “blizzard” may trigger some post-traumatic shivers. However, engineers can quickly warm to the torrent of product announcements made at this year’s IEEE Applied Power Technology Conference, which opened Monday, March 16, in Charlotte, N.C.

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Power Electronics: Vicor Expands DCM DC-DC Converter Module Series

Vicor Expands DCM DC-DC Converter Module Series

At APEC, Vicor Corporation announced expansion of its DCM Converter Module Series of isolated, regulated DC-DC converters within Vicor's Converter housed in Package™ (ChiP) power component platform. This series now covers critical applications in Aerospace, EV/HEV, Rugged Systems, Industrial, and Telecom/Datacom. DCMs provide nominal input voltages of 24, 28, 48, 270, 290, and 300 Volts with nominal outputs of 48, 36, 28, 24, 15, 12, and 5 Volts and are available in packages with up to 600 Watts of power.