Common sense says progress doesn't come hand in hand with companies becoming more open to talking about their technologies, never a common situation in the power industry. But the evidence indicates that the increased company consolidation we've seen in recent years is bringing something new to power, as more companies gain a breadth of interdisciplinary expertise and contact with a number of relatively new materials and circuit technologies.

Thus, we expect this year's advances, and those for the next several years, to hinge on common sense managing, not technical prowess per se.

Last year, a 50-W surface-mount dc/dc converter was on the horizon. Now several companies openly discuss a surface-mount goal of 100 W. We won't see a power version of Moore's Law here, but going from 25 to 50 to 100 W in two years is success enough.

In dc/dc converters, the efficient, compact single-turn transformer technology quickly realized its potential. Now, BTC Power (Costa Mesa, Calif.) says it will soon release a 12-V out, 950-W converter in a full brick, representing a substantial improvement in an area where we were already amazed with the 600-W bricks available.

Power management, a major focal point for the industry, took a big step forward in 1999 with Texas Instruments' acquisition of Unitrode/Benchmarq, along with Power Trends. That union is expected to turn up the largely IC-based competition a notch, given TI's breadth of experience.

In universal power supplies, Powerware's acquisition of Best Power quickly renewed interest in the issue of the integrated switcher/UPS, something we could see very soon. Invensys, which owns both those companies as well as Lambda and Hawker, now has the inside track. Only 365 days ago, talk of an internal UPS card was excitement enough.