Vicor Corporation (‘Vicor’) designs, develops, manufactures, and markets modular power components and power systems for converting electrical power.
The company’s strategy, competitive positioning, and product offerings are all based on highly differentiated product performance, reflecting its anticipation of the evolution of system power architectures and customer performance requirements. Since the company was founded, it has pursued continuous innovations in product design and achievements i...
Vicor Corporation (‘Vicor’) designs, develops, manufactures, and markets modular power components and power systems for converting electrical power.
The company’s strategy, competitive positioning, and product offerings are all based on highly differentiated product performance, reflecting its anticipation of the evolution of system power architectures and customer performance requirements. Since the company was founded, it has pursued continuous innovations in product design and achievements in product performance, largely enabled by its focus on the research and development of advanced technologies and processes, often implemented in proprietary semiconductor circuitry, materials, and packaging. Reflecting this strategy, the company categorizes its offerings as either ‘Advanced Products’ or ‘Brick Products,’ generally based on design, performance, and form factor considerations, as well as the range of evolving applications for which the products are appropriate.
The company’s wholly-owned subsidiary, VICR Securities Corporation, is also located in Andover, Massachusetts. The company’s other domestic offices are located in Santa Clara, California, Lombard, Illinois, and Lincoln, Rhode Island. The company’s two Vicor Custom Power subsidiaries, Freedom Power Systems, Inc., and Northwest Power, Inc., are located in Cedar Park, Texas, and Milwaukie, Oregon, respectively.
The company has established individual subsidiaries or unincorporated branch offices outside of the United States, which it calls Technical Support Centers (‘TSCs’), to conduct preparatory and auxiliary services in support of the company. Vicor Japan Company, Ltd. (‘VJCL’), the company’s 92.5%-owned Japanese subsidiary, which is engaged in sales and customer support activities exclusively for the sale of certain products customized by VJCL for the Japanese market, is headquartered in Tokyo, Japan.
Strategy
The company’s strategy emphasizes demonstrable product differentiation and a value proposition based on competitively superior solution performance, advantageous design flexibility.
The company’s strategy complements performance superiority with design flexibility (i.e., ease of use), as its products can be utilized individually or combined, given their level of integration, to create power system solutions specific to a customer’s precise needs.
The company’s product portfolio also includes families of ‘front-end’ devices, which address applications requiring the transformation of AC voltages to regulated DC voltages. Examples of such applications include powering data center server racks, large-scale LED lighting, specialized laboratory, diagnostic, and test equipment, small-cell wireless base stations, and higher power equipment for defense and industrial use.
Reflecting the company’s strategy, it categorizes its offerings as either Advanced Products or Brick Products, generally based on design, performance, and form factor considerations, as well as the range of evolving applications for which the respective categories are appropriate. The Advanced Products category consists of its most innovative products, which are used to implement its proprietary distribution architecture, Factorized Power Architecture (‘FPA’), a highly differentiated approach to power distribution that enables flexible, rapid power system design using individual components optimized to perform a specific function. The Brick Products category largely consists of integrated power converters (i.e., ‘bricks’), incorporating multiple conversion stages, used in conventional power systems architectures, including Centralized Power Architecture (‘CPA’), Distributed Power Architecture (‘DPA’), and Intermediate Bus Architecture (‘IBA’).
Given the growth profiles and performance requirements of the market segments served with Advanced Products and Brick Products, the company’s strategy involves a continuing transition in organizational focus, emphasizing investment in Advanced Products design and manufacturing, targeting high growth market segments, while maintaining a profitable business in mature market segments it serves with Brick Products.
Products
Reflecting the company’s Power Component Design Methodology, it offers a comprehensive range of modular building blocks enabling rapid design of a power system specific to a customer’s precise needs. Based on design, performance, and form factor considerations, as well as the range of evolving applications for which the products are appropriate, the company categorizes its product portfolios as either Advanced Products or Brick Products. It also sells a range of electrical and mechanical accessories for use with its products.
Advanced Products
The company continues to invest in the research and development of power system technologies and product concepts addressing two accelerating trends, the first toward higher required conversion efficiencies, and the second toward more and diverse on-board voltages, higher performance demands of complex loads, and, in particular, higher current requirements of those loads. These trends are most visible in the microprocessor-based applications it targets with Advanced Products, for which energy consumption, energy efficiency, processor performance, and computing density are critical priorities. Recognizing the performance and scale limitations of conventional power distribution architectures and products, it introduced FPA and a range of enabling products incorporating its latest advances in power distribution concepts, switching topologies, materials, and packaging.
FPA, which is focused on, but not limited to, 48V DC distribution solutions, increases power system conversion efficiency, density, and power delivery performance by ‘factorizing’ (i.e., separating) the power conversion process into individual components, reducing the design limitations and thermal management challenges, and scaling trade-offs associated with conventional architectures for DC voltage distribution. All such architectures follow a sequence whereby a DC voltage is first transformed, or reduced, and that lower voltage subsequently conducted (i.e., ‘bussed’) across the circuit to the ‘load’ (i.e., the point of use), where the voltage is regulated and lowered once more, to the required operating voltage of the load. In a FPA implementation, the sequence is reversed. Regulation occurs first, and the regulation module can be placed in the optimal position for space utilization and thermal management. A regulated voltage approaching 48V is bussed across the circuit to the transformation module, which performs what the company refers to as current multiplication, adjacent to the load. Bussing high voltage minimizes the current levels across the circuit, thereby minimizing the potential for distribution losses and reducing the volume of the conduit (e.g., the copper wire). Placing the relatively low noise, low heat multiplication module adjacent to the load further minimizes the potential for distribution losses associated with bussing a low operating voltage to the load and reduces the potential influence of the power system on the performance of the load.
A typical FPA implementation for delivering 48V DC from a server backplane to a 1.0V microprocessor would consist of three modules: a PRM (Pre-Regulator Module) regulator, a VTM (Voltage Transformation Module) current multiplier, and a proprietary communications controller. In contrast, a commodity IBA design for delivering 48V DC from a server backplane to a 1.0V microprocessor requires an additional conversion stage, to reduce 48V to 12V, and, at the point of load, a voltage regulation module (i.e., a ‘VRM’ consisting of multiple switching regulators, each representing a phase and consisting of two switching transistors, one or more capacitors, and an inductor, with the transistors switched by pulse width modulation controller). For a 200W two-stage, multiphase application, a 12V commodity IBA implementation would require an intermediate bus converter, to reduce 48V to 12V, and a VRM solution consisting of parallel phases (i.e., multiple switching regulators) to reduce and regulate the current for use at 1.0V by the microprocessor. Such a commodity IBA implementation requires a significantly higher component count, consumes more motherboard area, requires more copper conduit, generates more heat due to switching and distribution losses, offers inferior dynamic response, and can be meaningfully less efficient than a 48V FPA implementation.
The company’s ‘Power-on-Package’ power system solutions meet the computational performance requirements of artificial intelligence (‘AI’). The microprocessors typically used in AI, particularly in more computationally demanding ‘machine learning’ or ‘training’ applications, are graphics processing units (‘GPUs’) and custom application-specific integrated circuits (‘ASICs’). Unlike central processing units (‘CPUs’), which are designed for serial execution of complex and broad instruction sets, GPUs and AI ASICs are designed for massively parallel (i.e., concurrent) processing of repetitive transactions or calculations. As such, GPUs and AI ASICs generally operate at processing frequencies requiring the higher levels of average and peak current delivered by its FPA-based solutions. The company’s most popular Power-on-Package solution consists of one MCD (Modular Current Driver) unit, providing high-bandwidth, low-noise regulation, and two MCM (Modular Current Multiplier) units, providing high-performance current multiplication. Power-on-Package delivers unprecedented current levels to GPUs and AI ASICs, in part due to the placement of the MCMs directly on the substrate onto which the processor is mounted, thereby minimizing distribution losses associated with high current levels. Placement of MCM units on the substrate also reduces the number of GPU or ASIC processor substrate pins required for power, allowing for their use by other functions (e.g., memory input/output (‘I/O’)). This three-module laterally-mounted Power-on-Package configuration, powering an AI accelerator card requiring 350W, delivers 0.7V, 650A average current, and up to 1,200A peak current to the GPU or AI ASIC.
The company’s latest innovation for powering processors is vertical power delivery, which involves mounting its highest-performance solutions on the underside of the motherboard, opposite the GPU or AI ASIC, thereby enabling a further reduction in distribution losses at the load, yielding higher efficiency and unprecedented power density. Vertically mounting the solution allows unrestricted access to microprocessor input/output I/O pins on the top side of the motherboard, thereby improving I/O speed and memory access, which are a priority for GPUs and AI ASICs in AI applications. The company continues the development of its vertical power delivery solutions and shipped prototype products to a certain customer in 2022.
The company’s proprietary technologies enable it to offer a range of Advanced Products, in various package formats across functional families, applicable to other market segments and power distribution architectures other than FPA. Within computing, these market segments include AC to DC voltage conversion and DC voltage distribution in server racks and high voltage conversion across datacenter infrastructure. The company also offers Advanced Product power system solutions for aerospace and aviation (e.g., for use in satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles, and various airframes, including battery-powered aircraft, for which small size, light weight, and design flexibility are advantageous); defense electronics (e.g., for use in airborne, seaborne, or field communications and radar, for which reliability in harsh environments is a priority); factory automation, instrumentation, and test equipment (e.g., for use in robotics and semiconductor testing, for which high power levels and precision performance are required); telecommunications and networking infrastructure (e.g., for use in high-throughput data distribution and pole-mounted small-cell base stations); and vehicles (e.g., in autonomous driving applications, electric vehicles, and hybrid electric vehicles).
Brick Products
Brick-format converters provide the integrated transformation, rectification, isolation, regulation, filtering, and/or input protection necessary to power and protect loads, across a range of conventional power architectures. The company offers a wide range of brick-format DC-DC converters, as well as complementary components providing AC line rectification, input filtering, power factor correction, and transient protection. Wide ranges of input voltages, output voltages, and output power are offered, allowing end users to select components appropriate to their individual applications. The products differ in dimensions, temperature grades, maximum power ratings, performance characteristics, pin configuration, and, in certain cases, characteristics specific to the targeted market.
The company also integrates these converters and components into complete power systems representing standard or custom AC-DC and DC-DC solutions for its customers' power needs. It refers to such standard products as its ‘Configurable’ product line, while its two Vicor Custom Power subsidiaries design, sell, and service custom power system solutions.
The company markets its standard Brick Products emphasizing ‘mass customization,’ using highly automated, efficient, domestic manufacturing to serve customers with product design and performance requirements, across a wide range of worldwide market segments, which could not be met by high-volume oriented competitors. It focuses on distributed power implementations, for which its brick-format products are well-suited, in market segments, such as aerospace and defense electronics, industrial equipment, instrumentation and test equipment, and transportation (e.g., rail and heavy equipment applications). The company’s customers range from independent manufacturers of highly specialized electronic devices to larger original equipment manufacturers (‘OEMs’) and their contract manufacturers. Some of the company’s Brick Product lines have been in production for over a decade, reflecting the maturity of the markets it serves, the long-established relationships it has with many customers, and the long-standing suitability of its products to demanding applications.
Customers
The applications in which the company’s Advanced Products and Brick Products are used are typically in the higher-performance, higher-power segments of the market segments it serves. With the company’s Advanced Product lines, its customers are concentrated in the data center and hyperscaler segments of enterprise computing, in which its products are used for power delivery on server motherboards, in server racks, and across datacenter infrastructure, although it also serves applications in aerospace and aviation, defense electronics, satellites, factory automation, instrumentation, test equipment, transportation, telecommunications and networking infrastructure, and vehicles (notably in the autonomous driving, electric vehicle, and hybrid vehicle niches of the vehicle segment). With the company’s Brick Product lines, it serves customers concentrated in aerospace and defense electronics, industrial equipment, instrumentation and test equipment, and transportation (notably in rail and heavy equipment applications).
Exports to China and Hong Kong are heavily oriented toward Brick Products for industrial and rail applications, as well as certain aerospace and defense electronics applications permitted under the U.S. export control regulations (the company’s products are designated EAR99 commodities under the Export Administration Regulations of the U.S. Department of Commerce and are not subject to export licenses).
Marketing and Sales
The company reaches and serves customers through several sales channels: a direct sales force; independent, authorized non-stocking distributors in Europe and Asia; and four authorized stocking distributors worldwide: Arrow Electronics, Inc., Digi-Key Corporation, Avnet Electronics, and Mouser Electronics, Inc. All sales channels are supported by regional TSCs, each offering application engineering and sales support for its channel partners. Domestic TSCs are located in Andover, Massachusetts; Lombard, Illinois; and Santa Clara, California. International TSCs are located in Beijing, China; Hong Kong, China; Shanghai, China; Shenzhen, China; Munich, Germany; Bangalore, India; Milan, Italy; Tokyo, Japan; Seoul, South Korea; Taipei, Taiwan (Republic of China); and Camberley, the United Kingdom. Customers do not place purchase orders with TSCs, but do so directly with the company or with its channel partners. In Japan, customers place purchase orders with authorized distributors or, for certain custom products, VJCL.
The company generally sells its products on the basis of its standard terms and conditions, and it most commonly warrants its products for a period of two years. The warranty period is three years for a range of H Grade, M Grade, and MI Family DC-DC products.
The company’s direct sales force focuses on higher-volume opportunities involving Advanced Products with global OEMs (and the Original Design Manufacturers (‘ODMs’) and contract manufacturers serving these OEMs).
The company’s web-based resources are an important element of its efforts to interact with and support customers. Within the company’s website, the Power System Designer workspace of tools and references allows engineers to select, architect, and implement power systems using its products. The company’s highly differentiated Whiteboard tool allows users to configure and analyze their own power system designs or those from an extensive library of designs addressing a wide range of applications. Users can modify the operating condition for each component of their design to match the intended application and perform efficiency and loss analysis of individual components and the full power system. The company continues to enhance and expand the range and capabilities of engineering tools it makes available online to customers and prospective customers.
As stated, the company’s strategy involves maintaining high levels of customer engagement and support for design and engineering.
Intellectual Property
As of December 31, 2024, in the United States, the company had been issued 121 patents having expirations scheduled between 2025 and 2040 and had filed a number of patent applications, which are still pending, many of which are expected to issue as patents in 2025.
Research and Development
The company’s research and development expenses increased to $68,922,000 in 2024.
History
Vicor Corporation was founded in 1981. The company was incorporated in Delaware in 1981.
