News

Bel Power and Murata sign Digital Power Patent License

September 14, 2016 by Jeff Shepard

Bel Fuse Inc. has entered into a non-exclusive, worldwide, multi-year field of use license agreement with Japan-based Murata Manufacturing Co., Ltd.. Under the terms of the agreement, Bel Power Solutions has licensed specific digital power technology (DPT) patents to Murata facilitating the design and manufacture of digital board mounted power supply solutions with advanced control, configuration and telemetry features.

Digital power architecture enables OEMs' products and data centers to optimize power conversion efficiency, reduce energy costs, and enhance energy management capabilities. It drives increased power density, lower cooling costs, improved product functionality, advanced monitoring, and flexible product configuration.

DPT is used in designs based on FPGAs (Field-Programmable Gate Array), ASICS (Application Specific Integrated Circuit) and DSPs (Digital Signal Processor) requiring multiple voltage rails and output voltages dropping below 1V. DPT facilitates telemetry, which allows the system to accurately monitor its power consumption and thermal performance to let designers easily engineer key features such as system power optimization, fault detection and predictive maintenance features into their end products.

Dennis Ackerman, President of Bel Power Solutions, stated, "Our DPT patent license agreement with Murata underscores the value of Bel's technology patents and exemplifies our commitment to encouraging innovation by licensing access to our patent portfolio. We look forward to working with Murata and continuing to provide energy-efficient technologies with increased functionality for our customers worldwide."

Tatsuo Bizen, Director of Murata’s Power Modules Division stated, “Murata is investing significant resources on numerous initiatives across many of our product offerings in the areas of power conversion and overall energy management systems. The DPT patents will complement our existing expertise in these areas and expand our R&D capacities.”

Steve Pimpis, President and CEO of Murata Power Solutions added, “Customers are continuously pushing suppliers of power for solutions offering more advanced digital control and system level communication, increased power density, and more energy efficient technologies. This license agreement is an important part of our product roadmap strategy that will further facilitate our product development efforts that will bring increasing value to our worldwide customers.”