Allegro MicroSystems, Inc. (NASDAQ: ALGM), saw its shares pretty much unchanged Wednesday, after expanding its portfolio of three-phase sensorless BLDC gate drivers.
Its newest offerings, the A89332 and A89332-1, are designed to meet the evolving needs of cooling systems in today’s data centers offering flexible options for designers. Available with innovative integrated power loss brake (A89332) and AC-loss (A89332-1) features, these drivers enable compact, high-airflow fan designs to improve thermal efficiency, reducing energy use and data center costs.
When server fans malfunction or break, backflow causes them to go into reverse rotation. The other fans have to work harder to compensate for the resulting airflow, which increases power consumption.
The traditional solution to preventing reverse rotation is adding external circuitry and components to function as the power loss brake—components that do not fit into 1U fans. This approach requires software coding, increases bill of material (BoM) size, and increases time to market.
Addressing these pain points, the A89332’s integrated power loss brake (PLB) function applies a brake to fans that aren’t working properly and stops them from spinning, with braking performance that’s four times better than discrete implementations.
This eliminates unnecessary power consumption and increases thermal efficiency, ultimately reducing data center costs. When combined with the A89332-1’s AC loss logic, Allegro is now able to serve the high-end server market with the industry’s smallest gate driver, offered in a 4mm x 4mm QFN package that’s 36% smaller than comparable options—perfect for “donut” circuit boards.
Shares in ALGM gathered four cents to $23.77.
