Hardware Podcasts

Inventing the Power MOSFET with Alex Lidow

The Amp Hour · 20 Mar 2026 · 1h 05m · Episode 719

What this episode covers

Alex Lidow, founder and CEO of Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) and former CEO of International Rectifier, recounts inventing the Power MOSFET and HEXFET while working at IR. He explains the physics of Gallium Nitride (GaN) on silicon, the founding of EPC after being fired from IR, and the company's strategic focus on low-voltage performance markets and integrated circuits for AI data centers and humanoid robots. Lidow also discusses the challenges of patent enforcement in the US versus China and the technical details of high-efficiency power topologies for next-generation NVIDIA servers.

Most relevant to

companies scaling up

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Efficient Power Conversion, International Rectifier, NVIDIA, Infineon, Navitas, InnoScience, Apple, IBM, Siemens, DigiKey
Products
Power MOSFET, HEXFET, CoolMOS, Trench MOSFET, IGBT
Tools
Altium
Materials
Gallium Nitride, Silicon Carbide

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