Circuit protection components like over current protector (OCP) and over voltage protector (OVP) are widely applied in 3C products. Although Taiwan has long been manufacturing 3C products, its circuit protection component market is still mainly supplied by MNCs. There are, however, a few local companies involved in circuitprotection components. One of them is INPAQ Technology Corp., which manufactures a wide range of integrated passive components, including EMI filters, OVPs and OCPs. It does well in OVPs, and is estimated to have a local market share of between 30 and 40 percent. According to Andy Chen, spokesperson for INPAQ, "OVPs, which are mainly applied to motherboards, laptops and mobile phones, comprise 70 percent of our revenue. On the other hand, we are still fairly new when it comes to OCPs." ACQUIRED INTELLIGENCE The trend for heat protection devices is toward intelligence. Managing heat and improving system performance and reliability are important for many applications, including cellphones, communications equipment, consumer electronics, medical systems, and industrial/ embedded systems. Products like HDTVs, set-top boxes, video games and media gateways, which require sophisticated electronics to manage and display data, all requireheat protection. Dave Pivin, a product applications manager at Andigilog, said, "Managing heat of CE equipment while maintaining the performance levels expected by consumers will continue to be a challenge for years to come." Andigilog is one of the heat protection vendors that focus on the PC market. The majority of its products are used in the PC industry for notebooks, desktops, server motherboards, etc. LESS NOISE "Besides the PC sector, we also see the need for smarter, less noisy fan products for the CE market," Pivin added. "We are just starting to probe into the problems associated with acoustic noise from fans in PCs. This is a challenge that CE manufacturers have faced for decades. But now even CE manufacturers realize that heat pipes and other conventional passive heat distribution techniques won't work as the demand for high-performance solutions that drive next-generationproducts intensifies." Andigilog sees the need for more intelligent heat protection devices that coordinate with a central monitoring architecture. The company's ITM (intelligent thermal management) solution is a comprehensive system designed to meet today's complex cooling requirements, including accurate sensing, precision temperature control, and acoustic management, for better system performance. |
