Silanna’s FirePower SL2120 octal gate driver and SL2130 octal GaN FET array has been shortlisted for the Electronics Excellence Awards under the Semiconductor category.
LiDAR is a critical sensing technology for autonomous vehicles, industrial automation, robotics, mapping, and precision measurement. It has been shown to be more effective than camera-only systems. The high-resolution systems needed in automotive, industrial, and robotics applications require high channel counts, but scaling a transmitter with discrete drivers and FETs to the required 64 and 128 channels significantly increases not only routing complexity and therefore parasitics and BOM, but also crucially cost. AV makers are either refusing to use LiDAR, or reducing the number of on-board sensors, citing these factors.
Silanna’s FirePower SL2120 and SL2130 address that scaling challenge as a matched eight-channel laser transmitter chipset that can be easily combined on a PCB to create low-complexity, low-parasitic, and low-cost 64 and 128-channel LiDAR. Indeed, its use can reduce transmitter size by up to 70% and cost by more than 30% compared with traditional discrete implementations. The chipset delivers pulse speeds down to 1ns, peak power above 200W per channel, sub-5-ns propagation delays, and a firing frequency up to 50MHz operation for a single output. The chipset also gives independent control over channel selection and firing sequences, enabling programmable optical signatures for developing advanced LiDAR algorithms.
The SL2120 also integrates configurable output-control modes, SPI access, a negative gate-drive charge pump, undervoltage and overtemperature protection, output-fault monitoring and programmable fault responses. These functions support safer, more controllable multi-channel designs without requiring a separate control approach for every laser channel. The chipset is also both laser class (EEL, VCSEL) and architecture (common anode/cathode/custom) agnostic, enabling optics, receiver and complete ranging system to remain part of the customer’s design. The result is a scalable semiconductor platform for compact and low-cost high-performance LiDAR architectures.
For more information, visit: https://silannasemi.com
The Electronics Excellence Awards ceremony will take place at electronica on Tuesday 10th November at 12.30pm at the Hall C6 stage.
You’re all welcome to come and see which product will win!
