EEWebPULSE_2012_i0055.pdf

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EE Web
PULSE
EE Web.com
Issue 55
July 17, 2012
Parviz Ghaffaripour
Akros Silicon
Electrical Engineering Community
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
4
Parviz Ghaffaripour
AKROS SILICON
Interview with Parviz Ghaffaripour - President, CEO and Director
10
Featured Products
12
Illogical Logic - Part 4: Counters
BY PAUL CLARKE WITH EBM-PAPST
The last installmant of the Illogical Logic series shows how to build a counter with a
7-segment display.
16
Reducing EOS Exposure of Components
During Soldering
BY VLADIMIR KRAZ WITH ONFILTER, INC.
A look into how a soldering tip gets voltage from high frequency signals.
23
RTZ - Return to Zero Comic
3
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INTERVIEW
Parviz
Ghaffaripour
AKROS SILICON
President, CEO
and Director
How did you become
interested electronics and
engineering?
I was very interested in mathematics
and science in junior high and high
school, so studying engineering
seemed to be the logical choice
in college. I went to UC Berkeley
and got my bachelor’s degree
in Electrical Engineering. Later
on, I continued my education to
receive my MSEE from Santa Clara
University and Executive MBAs
from Stanford and Western Ontario.
I spent the next 21 years at Exar
Corp, National Semiconductor and
Maxim Integrated Products. When I
joined Maxim the late Jack Gifford,
whom I regard as a legend in our
industry, offered me the amazing
opportunity to choose what I
wanted to work on. There I helped
start several different product lines
including LED display drivers,
supervisory system functions
(including thermal monitoring
and power management devices),
I started my career as a professional
analog IC design engineer at Exar
Corporation. I’m old enough to
know how to design circuits by
relying on paper and pencil rather
than computers. What I always
liked about analog IC design was
anticipating the results of several
parameters before making a
decision, which I see as analogous
to playing chess.
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INTERVIEW
and high-speed interconnects
for infotainment in automotive
applications.
design to those specifications. This
“bag of chips” approach might have
been adequate in early days, but
today this design methodology leads
to what I believe is a difficulty in the
industry. Today’s system boards
incorporate many component ICs
that were not designed to work
together but were designed by
different people, at different times,
and in different technologies.
began to focus on how to increase
the energy efficiency of systems.
At Akros we asked a very basic
question: What does energy
management mean? We’ve all
seen the advertisements telling us
to unplug our TVs and computers
because even though they’re
turned off, they still consume power
when connected to, say, AC power
or to a high-voltage power source.
Estimates are that consumers
spend something like $28 billion
dollars in energy waste from our
PCs being connected to power
while not in use. That translates
to 30% of energy that is generated
being wasted.
I left Maxim to follow my dream of
starting my own company in the
power management area. I met
the board of directors of Akros
Silicon while I was pitching my
own company. Akros, which was
founded in 2005, had developed
a unique isolation technology
called GreenEdge TM and faced
the challenge of utilizing and
proliferating this proven technology
into many product types and
creating revenue. Given my
background, I immediately realized
I wanted to join the company.
In contrast, it’s beneficial to consider
the needs of the overall system and
to be able to explain in layman terms
how a specific part will be used and
how it will benefit the end design.
Each of us should try to step outside
of our comfort zone and dabble in
other areas; IC designers should be
able to take the system designers’
point of view and system designers
should understand IC design, and
so forth. This is the approach we
take at Akros.
This knowledge led us to ask a
more difficult question: Why is this
happening? The obvious answer
was lack of access to the primary
side of the system.
Have you had any noteworthy
engineering experiences, and
is there any advice you could
give to the EE community
based on your experience?
With 28 years in the industry
working with five companies,
I’ve worked on many different
projects. The noteworthy products
that come to mind that I designed
or co-designed are the ignition
controller for Magnavox (Honda)
motorcycles, the first 3v RS232,
the first LVDS driver and receiver
products, and the Boomer audio
power amplifier. And now, of
course, with Akros I am working
with a very unique technology that
revolutionizes the whole concept of
energy management
I can explain it this way: a system
has both a primary and a secondary
side. The high-voltage, or primary,
side is usually connected to either
an AC voltage or a high-voltage DC.
The low-voltage, or secondary, side
is the one that consumers come
in contact with. Safety purposes
and regulations require that the
secondary side is separated, or
isolated, from the primary side of
the system. Most of the activities in
the power management arena have
been focused on this secondary
side.
Could you tell us more about
GreenEdge?
The concept behind our
GreenEdge isolation technology
is based on approaching energy
management differently from
the way power management is
approached. Traditionally, power
management has been identified
with voltage or current conversion,
and almost every analog IC design
company provides products for
this arena. And now in the last five
years, several overseas companies
have joined the power management
business with the goal of providing
similar solutions but at much lower
prices. Meanwhile, in recent
years the “green” movement has
made energy management more
of a priority. Akros recognized this
important shift back in 2005 and
From my experience I believe it’s
very important for designers to think
outside of the frame, or the box,
we’re put in. For example, an IC
designer is typically given a set of
specifications that narrowly define
a specific part and is then asked to
This system-level view spurred
us to come up with a solution that
not only handles the requirements
of the secondary side, but also
creates a “bridge” to the high-
voltage primary side. In this way,
GreenEdge provides an isolation
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