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KIT's Spinoff 'Digital Power Systems' Develops Ultralong-lived Industrial Power Supplies:
Switching power supplies are omnipresent in our daily life, may it be in households, offices, or industry. They convert the alternating current supplied into direct current for smartphones, laptops, charging stations of e-cars, and logistics and computing centers. However, conventional power supplies usually have to be exchanged after nine years of permanent operation. Digital Power Systems (DPS), a spinoff of Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), has now developed and tested power supplies with a lifetime of 50 years.
Conventional switching power supplies are light and compact, but highly susceptible to failure due to the electrolyte capacitors they contain. Film capacitors are far more long-lived. So far, however, they have needed up to ten times more space. "We have now developed a digital control process, by means of which film capacitors can be used on smaller space," DPS Director Michael Heidinger says. [...]
[...] The novel digital control process allows for the use of film capacitors with a slightly increased space requirement only. For control purposes, a microprocessor is integrated in the power supply. It detects disturbing ambient impacts and balances large voltage fluctuations of the film capacitor. As a result, storage capacitors of smaller capacity are sufficient. Heidinger explains that powerful microprocessors have made this possible.
I've had to replace a number of electrolytic capacitors in several of my home appliances over the years, so I can appreciate this development, but do you think the concepts "lifetime of 50 years" and "integrated microprocessor" generally compatible?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by ChrisMaple on Sunday January 22 2023, @06:59AM (2 children)
I suppose an EEPROM could be developed that treated each bit like a DRAM treats each bit: after each read, the bit's charge is reinforced by writing back to it.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RS3 on Sunday January 22 2023, @09:15AM (1 child)
Very good. I like it. Only worry is bit rot if it's powered down for long times. Maybe a battery-backed refresh, but like once a day or something.
My wish for EPROM is a way to really know if all bits are fully erased. You know, if a cell is at 55%, it'll read as a 1, but you'd like it above 90% or so. Not sure if there would be a way to read the analog charge level in a cell. AFAIK they don't do that now, but it might be an interesting idea if you need very high reliability. Now I'm wondering what they use in spacecraft / satellites.
(Score: 2) by kazzie on Sunday January 22 2023, @06:31PM
If you're willing to sacrifice capacity drastically, you could do this by (e.g.) aggregating a byte of output lines to form one bit, maybe by analogue addition of output voltages or maybe digital majority voting. You could then survive three bitflips without repercussion, while still being able to inspect individual bits to check for rot.