Once again, we here at Electronic Products set out to find new products that are worthy of the title Product of the Year, and once again, we were not disappointed!
Now in its 38th year, Electronic Products’ 2013 Product of the Year competition poses the challenge to our suppliers for the most outstanding advancements in product development.
“The entries this year encompassed one of the best crops of products we have had the pleasure of judging, and the winners certainly earned the recognition” said Bryan DeLuca, Content Operations Director for Heart Electronics Group.
The Electronic Products editorial team – Paul O’Shea, Senior Editor; Richard Comerford, Editor; and Jim Harrison, Technical Editor – spent the last few months of 2013 reviewing, researching and debating the merits of over 250 product entries, using a very specific and strict set of judging criteria.
That criteria included whether a product presented a significant advancement in a technology or its application, featured ground-breaking innovation, and whether it offered a substantial achievement in price/performance.
The 2013 winners – 15 in all – reflect a diverse grouping of products that now share a common bond: Each has now earned the title of a Product of the Year.
Richard Comerford
Jim Harrison
Paul O'Shea
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Ultimately, the editors found that in terms of product innovation – particularly when it comes to power consumption, less is definitely more.
“We saw a great amount of semiconductor technology that will enable more efficient, faster, lower-power devices we desperately need,” said Paul O’Shea.
According to O’Shea, winners that most reflect this trend is the Cree CCS050M12CM2 silicon carbide (SiC) six-pack module, which is the industry’s first all sic three-phase power module in an industry standard 45-mm package.
“When replacing a silicon module with equivalent ratings, this six-pack module can reduce power losses by 75%, which leads to an immediate 70% reduction in the size of the heat sink or a 50% increase in power density. This now makes silicon carbide accessible –m in terms of price – to more designs,” he said.
Likewise, Transphorm earned its recognition by establishing the first qualified 600V device platform with its TPH3006PS GaN HEMT. The Gan transistor combines low switching and conduction losses, offering reduced energy loss of 50% compared to conventional silicon-based power conversion designs.
“There was more innovation this year, which is not surprising in light of the improved economy. The common thread that ran throughout the products was power efficiency, from small devices like Microchip's gesture-sensing IC to Tektronix’s power analyzer,” said Richard Comerford.
Overly sensor-tive
“The need for sensors in portable devices from smart phones to medical devices was clearly evident as well,” noted Richard Comerford.
For instance, the SENtral Sensor Fusion Coprocessor from PNI Sensor Corp. “is a highly effective way to pull in data from complex motion sensors – gyroscopes, accelerometers, and magnetic sensors like those found in mobile and wearable devices,” noted Jim Harrison.
The device off loads complex signal processing from a main CPU and takes only a few hundred µA while doing so, consuming about 1% of the power a standard CPUs needs to perform the task.
Harrison added that the BlueNRG Bluetooth Low Energy Network Processor reflects a growing trend as well.
“Bluetooth seems to be coming into great favor now, partly due to the Low Energy specification and the fact that several suppliers are making single-chip devices that can replace modules and be much more cost effective. The BlueNRG is a very low power Bluetooth low-energy network processor IC that is compliant with v4.0 specification. The STMicro implementation looks to be the best around, with the lowest power draw (just 7.3 ma active RX peak current) and great transmit/receive specs,” he said.
Other notable winners include the LPD5030V Miniature high-Isolation Transformer from Coilcraft; the LTC2378-20 20-Bit Low Power A/D converter from Linear Technology and the Broadcom BCM43341 Single-Chip Quad-Radio Device.
“Because of all the great products we had to review, choosing the PoYs this year was an extremely exhausting process. Let’s hope that next year it’s even more exhausting,” concluded Richard Comerford.
To learn more about each of the winners, be sure to read our special Product of the Year section on pages 28-31.
John Filippelli
Managing Editor
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