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ejiblabahaba

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ejiblabahaba
·hace 2 meses·discuss
There's basically no point. Desktop PSU is a solved problem, most designs are all about cost engineering and the tiny sliver of higher power and ultra high efficiency options are not struggling with their current form factor.

In the data center, where power (and cooling) are the only significant OpEx, GaN point-of-load conversion is everywhere. Common as a rack distributed 48V to 12V bus or direct to processor Vdd (2% duty cycle is feasible with GaN thanks to fast on/off times). There was a while where GaN was used as part of the power factor correction for AC to DC in the server power supply, back when passing 400VAC or 800VAC bus around made sense. I think these days it's mostly back to DC buses, and AC-to-DC is all happening farther back, in part because of widespread solar deployments and trying to avoid DC->AC->DC double conversion losses when possible. So maybe GaN gets use on active secondary rectifier in the bus -> 48V now too.
ejiblabahaba
·hace 3 meses·discuss
Well, kinda. The value is in meeting the spec, yes, but the "certifiable" part is very often a subset of the actual spec. Sort of like in software how someone will inevitably depend on every feature of a public API (including the defects), a lot of early military electronics depend on implementation details of their component processes, usually by accident. The cost for semiconductor companies is not meeting the spec, it's keeping a production line from the 1960s running exactly the same way for a single customer who buys a handful of parts every year.

The problem with Chinese semiconductors isn't performance or meeting specs, at least not these days. It's counterfeits, life expectancy of the source companies, and the obvious risk of basing your supply chain on a foreign political actor that can leverage this dependency against you.
ejiblabahaba
·hace 3 meses·discuss
I wouldn't be so quick to make guarantees. There's cheaper spec-equivalent devices, sure, but a frequent and recurring feature of military hardware prior to the 2000s is an unexpected dependence on non-spec device characteristics. I've seen seemingly inconsequential cost-saving process tweaks identified as the root cause for novel testing failures for more than one ancient US military project.

Setting aside that approximately no one is shooting down quadcopters with missiles, that quadcopters and missiles are entirely different categories of weapon with substantially different range/payload/response time targets, and that the availability logistics and acceptable failure rates of paramilitary gangs and impoverished former Soviet belligerents from whom we are likely drawing conclusions about drone warfare economics are maybe just a step or two below the average US military procurement contract requirements; and charitably interpreting your argument as a generalization that repurposed consumer-grade electronics offers a cost reduction over military-grade selections for equivalent performance: true in most modern cases. The US has plenty of cheap domestic options for seemingly pricy problem domains, just ask SpaceX. SOTA in aerospace and defense routinely uses commercial products to great effect. To the extent that shelling out for a $60 military-grade 1960s transistor instead of a $0.06 commercial equivalent is a problem for the US military, it is downstream of enormous legacy cold war capital investment in technology that was novel for its time but is comparatively brittle by modern standards. This is still a problem, to be clear, but a small one in the grand scheme of US military spending.
ejiblabahaba
·hace 5 meses·discuss
Suppose an asteroid strikes the Earth and all human life becomes extinct. What power, specifically, has been transferred, and to where?
ejiblabahaba
·hace 10 meses·discuss
I think the question was less about the efficacy of ABS, and more about the failure mode. Is it possible for the ABS system to "fail open" unintentionally, such that depressing the brake pedal has no effect whatsoever?