everything PE recently interviewed Ivo Marocco, Vice President, Business Development, Systems and Solution Marketing at Renesas. Renesas offers a broad portfolio of integrated circuits (ICs) and solutions supporting simple embedded systems to complex, high-performance applications.

Q. Can you tell us about Renesas? When was the company founded and what was its objective?

Ivo Marocco: Renesas is built on the foundation that combines the rich culture of technology and innovation of Hitachi, Mitsubishi, and NEC. Since 2017, we have expanded our analog product portfolio through many acquisitions including Intersil, IDT, and Dialog. 

Renesas will continue to grow as a global leader in embedded solutions for high-growth markets such as automotive, industrial/infrastructure, and IoT.

Q. Can you tell us more about your product portfolio?

Ivo Marocco: Renesas delivers a vast array of semiconductor products, which ranges from sensors, connectivity devices, and embedded MCUs/MPUs to actuators such as power devices, across the whole signal chain to help our customers realize complete embedded systems.

The Power Products Group at Renesas has evolved significantly through various acquisitions of companies renowned for their power management expertise. These acquisitions have brought us exceptional engineering talent, advanced technologies, and valuable intellectual property. We’ve integrated these assets to create a unified portfolio that supports a wide range of power management needs. This integration has allowed us to scale our operations, enhance innovation, and position ourselves strongly for future growth.

Our current strategic focus is on expanding our portfolio to serve multiple markets. This includes power management ICs (PMICs), computing power components, battery management systems, discrete and wide bandgap semiconductors, and a growing catalog of products like controllers, drivers, and eFUSEs. We’re leveraging these capabilities to address megatrends such as data growth, electrification, and energy efficiency.

Q. Which are the market segments actively catered by you?

Ivo Marocco: Our growth strategy revolves around three primary areas: infrastructure & AI, automotive and Industrial applications.

1. Infrastructure & AI: We see tremendous potential in data centers and computing power. The demand for higher performance and efficiency is driving growth in this sector. AI is a major factor here, as it requires significantly more power than traditional computing. We’re investing in technologies that can meet these high demands and provide digital power solutions for advanced computing applications.
2. Automotive: The automotive sector, particularly electric vehicles (EVs), presents substantial growth opportunities. We are expanding our solutions to include inverters, onboard chargers (OBCs), DC-DC converters, and battery management systems. We’re also focusing on discrete and wide bandgap technologies to support the evolving needs of the automotive industry.
3. Industrial Applications: This includes a broad range of sectors such as renewable energy, home automation, and industrial automation. We’re working on expanding our product offerings to meet the diverse needs of these applications.

Q. Can you tell us about the power management solutions of Renesas that enable innovation and sustainability across various industries in the power electronics sector?

Ivo Marocco: One notable trend is that AI is significantly changing the landscape of power requirements. AI systems for the cloud AI computing area, particularly AI GPUs, demand much more power compared to traditional CPUs. While high-end CPUs may require around 500 watts per CPU, AI GPUs are already consuming 1.2 kilowatts and could reach up to 3 kilowatts in the future. We will provide advanced digital power solutions for these high-end AI chips as well as edge AI applications.

In the automotive market, we have a comprehensive portfolio that addresses both traditional and electric vehicle applications. We are leveraging our strong presence in MCUs and SoCs by integrating them with our power solutions. This includes expanding our product offerings and supporting innovations in the EV space. Although the current growth rate for EVs is slightly below expectations, we anticipate significant growth over the next 5 to 10 years. We are prepared to support this growth with scalable solutions and by continuing to expand our product portfolio.

Our goal is to simplify development and make our customer's lives easier. The "Winning Combinations" concept is all about integrating our various products to create comprehensive solutions that provide more value to our customers. By combining our power management ICs with other components such as controllers and drivers, we can offer tailored solutions that simplify design and implementation for our customers.

This approach not only enhances our value proposition but also helps our customers achieve better performance and efficiency in their applications. For example, we provide more than 15 Winning Combinations, including eight real board implementations, which combine our GaN FETs with our controllers and drivers. This integration helps us deliver a more complete solution to our customers, making their design processes easier and more efficient.

Q. How does Renesas' PowerCompass tool enhance power design?

Ivo Marocco: PowerCompass enhances power design by simplifying user requirements, filtering down to best-fit parts, and allowing the user to compare their choice of parts with the option of generating reference designs with schematic-enabled parts with BOM for users to fine-tune.  Renesas’ PowerCompass tool has two user modes called “Manual Entry” and “Function/Application” to select from. Both modes are designed to help users quickly identify parts that match their specific requirements.

In “Manual Entry” mode, users need to enter their DC input and output power range before the tool can generate the closest DC match parts to their selection. Once the part is picked, the tool can provide the user with high-level system analysis info like typical efficiency, estimate power loss, and 1K web pricing of the selected parts with an option to generate default schematics, if available. In this mode, it allows users to create their multi-rail power tree and the tool will recommend the best fit potential parts in each rail for users. 

The “Function/Application” mode is created to address basic users who are familiar with Renesas MCUs but not sure which Renesas power parts are best suited to power our MCUs. In this mode, the tool provides simplified user-friendly pull-down menus for DC input rail (e.g. Coin cell, 1S Li cell, 5 V, 12 V, 24 V, 48 V & 72 V) & Renesas MCU group (e.g. RL78, RA & RX) and sub-series (e.g. RA6Mx, RA2Ex, RL78/Gxx, RX2xT, etc). Once those options are selected, it will generate the best closest fit power parts where the user can sort them either by lowest cost or highest efficiency. This mode gives new and basic users to power a simple stepping stone to start. 

Q. What are zero voltage switching (ZVS) pulse width modulating (PWM) controllers?

Ivo Marocco: The basic concept of ZVS is to turn on a switching power device when its drain-to-source voltage (V_ds) has dropped to zero or near zero. Generally, ZVS can bring benefits such as reducing the switching losses, improving efficiency, enabling higher switching frequency and higher power density, etc. It can also reduce EMI due to the reduced dv/dt and voltage stress. 

Renesas has developed a family of high-performance AC/DC primary-side digital flyback ZVS controllers, including the iW980x, iW9801, and iW9802. It achieves ZVS operation for the main switch by utilizing a low-voltage auxiliary switch and transformer auxiliary winding while controlling the PWM duty cycle and switching frequency of the main switch. Compared to alternative ZVS flyback topology (e.g. active-clamping flyback (ACF) which requires an additional high-side high-voltage switch in a half-bridge configuration to achieve ZVS), the auxiliary-switch based ZVS topology offers lower BOM cost with similar performance.

The iW980x operates under Renesas' patented adaptive multi-mode-control (MMC) working with secondary-side regulation (SSR) for applications requiring high power density and high resolution in output voltage/current settings. It incorporates Renesas patented adaptive digital ZVS control technology to enable high efficiency and low EMI across different input/output voltage conditions, and its user-configurable ZVS timing can optimize performance for different power MOSFETs or GaN FETs. The adaptive MMC including PWM, PFM, and burst modes based on input voltage and output voltage/current improves efficiency across line and load conditions and eliminates audible noise.

The iW980x has built-in gate drivers optimized for GaN HEMT in addition to the option to drive MOSFETs. For easy EMI design these drivers incorporate our patented dynamic/adaptive gate driving control so that the dv/dt and di/dt are controlled in fine steps during the power device switching transition period. The iW980x also has digital-control-based switching frequency dithering to reduce EMI. In addition, it provides several built-in fault protections. It has an ultra-low standby power design and can achieve less than 20 mW no-load power consumption when paired with Renesas secondary-side controllers to give customers optimized total solutions.

All these innovative features have made the iW980x very competitive in the marketplace, enabling customers to achieve high-efficiency high-power-density AC/DC system designs in various applications from 45 W up to 200 W+, including Renesas latest 240 W 48 V EPR Winning Combination (240 W 48 V Extended Power Range AC/DC Adapter | Renesas).

Q. What are the main differences between hot-swap controllers and hot-plug controllers?

Ivo Marocco: Hot plugging and hot swapping, though often used interchangeably, are different actions in computer hardware management. Hot plugging specifically refers to the act of inserting or connecting a peripheral or component into a live system, such as inserting a USB device into a running computer. Hot swapping, in contrast, involves the removal and replacement of a component, like a hard drive or a network card, while the system remains powered on and operational.

The controllers manage the power and data requirements so that faults do not occur.  A hot swap controller ensures the system remains operational by managing power and data connections for a device to be removed and replaced without shutdown or administrator intervention. A hot plug controller provides the necessary interface and protocols for the device to be recognized and added seamlessly into the system. It usually handles electrical and signaling aspects to ensure that the device is safely and correctly connected and disconnected.

Renesas offers a comprehensive hot swap and hot plug controller selection that allows inserting and/or removing components without interruption to a system and enables power supply designers to increase the long-term reliability of their systems. Our controllers include advanced features such as IntelliTrip (dual-response to the degree of overcurrent condition), adjustable current regulation duration, load current monitoring, and integrated charge pumps, making them ideal for hot-swap and hot-plug applications.

Q. How does Renesas' power management technology integrate with automotive infotainment systems?

Ivo Marocco: Our automotive-grade PMIC solutions seamlessly integrate with automotive infotainment systems by providing a trust-worthy power source to Renesas’s R-Car SoC family given the unmatched close development collaboration between Renesas’s SoC and PMIC R&D groups. By incorporating our PMIC in the design, customers can significantly simplify their infotainment solution, meeting the correct power requirements and power sequencing needs from the beginning of the design, to name a few. 

Infotainment developers can focus their time on application innovation and faster go-to-market. In addition, customers are also able to reduce the board size compared to discrete power solutions by integrating all the required power rails into a single chip.

Q. How has the acquisition of Transphorm by Renesas helped in meeting the rising demand for wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductor products?

Ivo Marocco: The acquisition of Transphorm is a fundamental step in that strategy to continue to expand our wide bandgap portfolio. It's enabling us to give customers options and expand a portfolio in all the different markets that we serve. This is also a great example of the solution strategy, where we combine more of these products to deliver more value to our customers. We introduced 15 winning combinations combining the Transphorm Gan FET with our controls and driver, which shows the power of providing full solutions to our customers.

Q. What are the key milestones in Renesas' 2024 roadmap?

Ivo Marocco: Renesas will continue to invest in power management IC and discrete power devices, particularly WBG, to enable enhanced performance at a competitive cost across the market segments mentioned before, with a focus on innovation, quality, and also the robustness of the supply chain. For this reason, Renesas is placing the right level of attention on our factories and backend operations to ensure the demand of tomorrow is supported to achieve the forecasted growth and the 2030 vision of $20B of profitable revenue.

About Ivo Marocco

Ivo Marocco is Vice President at Renesas, leading the WW Business Development, Systems, and Solution Marketing team for the Power business unit. Ivo started his career as an analog designer for automotive systems at Infineon Technologies, has worked with the NFC team at NXP, and then moved to Texas Instruments where he held several roles from applications, product definition, marketing, and finally business leadership where he contributed to the growth and establishment of the battery management business. Before joining Renesas, Ivo worked as Sr. Dir. of the Automotive Software business at ADI, with a focus on in-cabin noise cancellation and voice identification.