This Week in PowerBites: Top Tech Trends, Hot Products, and More at APEC 2025

April 22, 2025

Electronic Design’s intrepid editors returned from the IEEE’s APEC 2025 conference with a heaping helping of the most innovative products, disruptive technologies, and important industry news, all covered in this special edition of PowerBites.

Lee Goldberg

Related To:

Electronic Design

What you’ll learn:

Wide-bandgap devices continue to mature rapidly, with many specialized GaN and SiC products emerging that address the specific requirements of various application segments.
Innovative power conversion and motor-driver architectures promise to deliver higher efficiencies at lower price points.
As IC vendors compete for a share of the growing the EV market, they’re offering highly integrated software/hardware reference designs that reduce end-user development cost.

There were plenty of new products at APEC this year. Below are some of the many standouts at the show. Several disruptive discoveries were hiding in plain sight at APEC 2025 as well.

Disruptive Discoveries Hiding in Plain Sight at APEC 2025

As usual, the IEEE's APEC 2025 power tech conference kept the Electronic Design staff hustling as we did our best to keep up with the tsunami of innovative products and technologies that made their debut at the four-day event. Among the most surprising developments we had the privilege of covering were from Ferric and Menlo Microsystems, a pair of relatively small companies that may make an outsized impact on the future of power design.

Power

Tales of Tech and Tiki: Old Friends Debate APEC 2025’s Most Disruptive Technologies

Power technology and potent tropical cocktails proved to be a perfect pairing as Editors Alix Paultre and Lee Goldberg discussed the disruptive discoveries they uncovered at APEC...

APEC 2025 ProductBites

APEC 2025 expanded the power technology universe with an immense array of evolutionary and revolutionary new products. APEC ProductBites brings you a sampling of some of our editors’ most interesting sightings.

Power Conversion
Electrified Transport Solutions
Power Devices
Power Management

Power Conversion

Power

Switcher Supply ICs Boost Power While Cutting Cost and Footprint

Power Integrations’s latest incarnation of its TinySwitch IC family enables development of compact, economical supplies up to 200 W that don’t compromise on performance or features...

Power

Single-Stage Bidirectional Switch Converters Target EV Chargers and More

Navitas’s bidirectional drivers enable advanced “single-stage” topologies to further enhance efficiency, power density, and performance in AC-DC and AC-AC conversion.

Power

USB-PD Converter Uses GaN to Deliver Space-Saving Power

The value-conscious 65-W GaN converter from STMicroelectronics targets fast chargers, adapters, and power supplies for home appliances.

Electrified Transport Solutions

Power

Hybrid Power Architecture Delivers GaN, IGBT Advantages to EV Apps

Cambridge GaN Devices’s hybrid architecture for power modules combines gallium-nitride and IGBT devices to give EV designers an efficient, affordable solution for drivetrains ...

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Automotive

Modular Hardware/Software Development Ecosystem Aimed at Electric Two-Wheelers

Why reinvent the wheel? Microchip’s modular development ecosystem makes designing custom electric two-wheel transportation solutions easier, faster, and much more fun.

Power Devices

250318_prodmod_nexperia_gan_and_sic_switches_promo

Power

1,200-V SiC MOSFETs Feature Compact Packaging with Topside Cooling

Nexperia’s new X.PAK packaging combines high thermal performance, compact size, and easy assembly for high-power applications.

Power

Gen-6 SJ MOSFETs Aimed at AI, Industrial Apps, and Smart-Home Appliances

A new family of 25 superjunction MOSFETs from Magnachip offers improved specific on-resistance, faster switching speeds, and enhanced ESD protection.

Power

80/100-V Power MOSFETs Feature Low On-Resistance and AEC-Q Qualification

Taiwan Semi’s latest single- and dual-output, automotive-grade devices offer what’s claimed as the industry’s best figure of merit for high-speed-switching in commercial and industrial...

Power Management

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Power

Li-ion Battery-Management Platforms Come with Pre-Validated Firmware

Power-management solutions developed by Renesas help simplify battery-pack design with fuel-gauge ICs, MCU, pre-validated firmware, software, and documentation.

More from APEC 2025

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Power

APEC 2025

Check out the latest power technologies that were on display at APEC 2025 as it celebrated its 40th anniversary.

About the Author

Lee Goldberg | Contributing Editor

Lee Goldberg is a self-identified “Recovering Engineer,” Maker/Hacker, Green-Tech Maven, Aviator, Gadfly, and Geek Dad. He spent the first 18 years of his career helping design microprocessors, embedded systems, renewable energy applications, and the occasional interplanetary spacecraft. After trading his ‘scope and soldering iron for a keyboard and a second career as a tech journalist, he’s spent the next two decades at several print and online engineering publications.

Lee’s current focus is power electronics, especially the technologies involved with energy efficiency, energy management, and renewable energy. This dovetails with his coverage of sustainable technologies and various environmental and social issues within the engineering community that he began in 1996. Lee also covers 3D printers, open-source hardware, and other Maker/Hacker technologies.

Lee holds a BSEE in Electrical Engineering from Thomas Edison College, and participated in a colloquium on technology, society, and the environment at Goddard College’s Institute for Social Ecology. His book, “Green Electronics/Green Bottom Line - A Commonsense Guide To Environmentally Responsible Engineering and Management,” was published by Newnes Press.

Lee, his wife Catherine, and his daughter Anwyn currently reside in the outskirts of Princeton N.J., where they masquerade as a typical suburban family.

Lee also writes the regular PowerBites series.