
Gallium nitride is the silicon of the future - KirinDave
https://www.theverge.com/2018/11/1/18051974/gallium-nitride-anker-material-silicon-semiconductor-energy
======
KirinDave
Earlier this week I saw an ad for a very, very small power supply rated at 45W
[0] and I thought it was a scam, but upon research it turns out there is a
major paradigm shift delivered via chemistry in both passive and active
electrical components developing.

This is not a promotion for the device, mind you. Just that we're abut to see
a ton of demonstrably _better_ electronics enter the market.

This has major implications for a lot of things, including much more efficient
data center design and much more compact SBCs and phones.

[0]: [https://www.ravpower.com/p/ravpower-45w-type-c-pd-wall-
charg...](https://www.ravpower.com/p/ravpower-45w-type-c-pd-wall-charger.html)

~~~
Gibbon1
Yeah. I read a great dead tree article (Probably Bob Pease) that pointed out
that the heat dissipation in power supplies is proportional to inefficiency
not efficiency. If you got from 90% efficient to 95% your required heat
dissipation is cut in half. The other metric is transformer size drops
radically with increasing frequency.

There is a wall where higher switching speed runs into the turn on/off time of
the power transistor. Efficiency drops and the power transistors get too hot.

These devices are moving that wall to ever higher frequencies. Being able to
run hotter and faster means much smaller power supplies.

