Efficiency Benefits Up to 82% in Energy Savings!

According to Flex Your Power, documented studies have proven the energy savings potential of LEDs:

	Replacing a red incandescent traffic signal head with a red LED unit cuts energy use by an estimated 82 to 93%. The use of LED traffic signals in cities can save 1 million kilowatt-hours (kWh) of energy and nearly $70,000 a year for every 100 signaled intersections replaced. The payback period is approximately two-and-a-half to three years through energy savings alone. There are 100 million exit signs in the United States containing incandescent lamps that consume a total of 20 billion kWh of electricity per year. LED lighting could save approximately three-quarters of this energy. By purchasing 1,000 exit signs for an initial investment of $30,000, a state government could save a net $455,562 over the products’ lifetime. The new signs would pay for themselves in six months. LEDs can replace neon, offering an 80% electricity efficiency improvement.

The benefits of LED lighting technology go far beyond reducing electricity consumption.

Even with a higher initial investment, dollar savings and quality improvements significantly outweigh costs.

LED technology's numerous benefits also include:
Long life and reduced maintenance cost High quality light output Increased safety as a result of LED's lower voltage Smaller, flexible light fixtures Increased durability (no filament to break) Lower lighting infrastructure load and cost for expansion

Shorten the development cycle for monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMIC)

Cree has developed a leading-edge process design kit (PDK) for GaN HEMT process technology. The Cree PDK, developed for use with Advanced Design System (ADS) from Agilent Technologies, Inc., can enable radio-frequency (RF) and microwave designers to shorten the development cycle for monolithic microwave integrated circuits (MMIC) used in high-power, high-performance electronic systems, resulting in a highly productive design flow.

The Cree GaN kit includes microstrip lines, discontinuities, scalable capacitors, inductors and resistors, pads, vias, airbridges and active devices (HEMTs) at multiple biases.

Cree’s GaN foundry is the world’s first state-of-the-art, wide-bandgap MMIC facility, and our GaN-on-silicon carbide devices have significantly higher power density, thermal conductivity and operating voltage than traditional GaAs or Silicon MMIC technologies. RF designers can take advantage of this PDK to create MMICs for high-power commercial wireless, wideband military, electronic-warfare and radar applications.

Electronic design automation (EDA) technology

“We are pleased to offer access to our GaN MMIC foundry capability through the Advanced Design System. This kit allows our customers to take advantage of an industry-leading electronic design automation (EDA) technology that provides seamless schematic through layout interoperability with design rule checking (DRC). This integrated design flow can help accelerate our customers’ time-to-market by offering an accurate and productive work environment,” said Jim Milligan, director of RF and microwave products at Cree.

MMIC design solution

“GaN is becoming more and more important in the industry. With Cree’s GaN process, our mutual customers have access to a powerful MMIC design solution in an integrated flow for leading-edge, high-power applications,” said Anitha Swaminathan, foundry program manager with Agilent’s EEsof EDA division.
For additional information about the Cree PDK, please call (919) 287-7816 or visit www.cree.com.

About Agilent
Agilent EEsof EDA is an industry-leading provider of RF-mixed signal circuit and system-design software. Agilent ADS offers powerful simulation, schematic and seamless integration with layout and DRC capability for complete front-to-back MMIC design in an integrated flow. For more information about Agilent's EDA solutions, visit www.agilent.com/find/eesof.

About Cree
Cree is leading the LED lighting revolution and setting the stage to obsolete the incandescent light bulb through the use of energy-efficient, environmentally friendly LED lighting. Cree is a market-leading innovator of lighting-class LEDs, LED lighting retrofit solutions, and semiconductor solutions for backlighting, wireless and power applications.

Cree’s product families include recessed LED down lights, blue and green LED chips, high-brightness LEDs, lighting-class power LEDs, power-switching devices and radio-frequency/wireless devices. Cree solutions are driving improvements in applications such as general illumination, backlighting, electronic signs and signals, variable-speed motors, and wireless communications.

For additional product and company information, please refer to www.cree.com.

JUNE 12, 2008 — Cree, Inc. (Nasdaq: CREE)  introduced the world’s first commercially available GaN monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) amplifiers.

These two “catalog” MMICs integrate Cree’s proven GaN RF transistor technology with a variety of other circuit elements to form fully integrated amplifier circuits. This allows for a dramatic reduction in size and increase in performance over hybrid amplifiers.

Many RF integrated circuits can now be identically replicated on a single silicon carbide (SiC) substrate in a production process similar to that used for commercial microprocessors.

The new broadband power amplifier MMICs, the CMPA0060005 and CMPA2560025, are now available for sample release in packaged and die formats.

The CMPA0060005 is a wideband 5-watt distributed amplifier operating from DC to 6 GHz. The CMPA2560025 is a higher-power, 25-watt reactively matched amplifier operating from 2.5 to 6 GHz. Both MMICs are suitable for a variety of applications where high power over broad bandwidths is required. As an example, a pair of CMPA2560025s driven by a CMPA0060005 can provide over 40 dB gain with an output power up to 50 watts in the 2.5 to 6-GHz band.

Standard Full-Wafer (SFW) MMIC Foundry Service

Cree also announces the expansion of its standard full-wafer (SFW) MMIC Foundry service to include shared multi-project (SMP) “pizza mask” foundry runs on a quarterly basis. This SMP service is available for both SiC MESFET and GaN HEMT MMIC processes.

“The introduction of the industry’s first off-the-shelf ‘catalog’ GaN MMICs continues to set Cree apart as the industry’s leader in wide bandgap MMIC technology,” said Jim Milligan, Cree director of RF and microwave products. “These products can provide our customers with the performance improvement and size-reduction benefits of microwave circuit integration in convenient ‘drop-in’ 50-ohm amplifiers. Further, our new SMP foundry service will be ideal for lower-cost prototyping of SiC or GaN MMICs by allowing customers to purchase a portion of a shared multi-project wafer.”

“This MMIC milestone is the culmination of many years of internal investment and external support from the U.S. Department of Defense, the Title III Office, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). These efforts are beginning to pay off for both the military and commercial markets,” said John Palmour, Ph.D., executive vice president for advanced devices at Cree.

Features of the GaN RF MMICs include:

CMPA0060005 GaN MMIC
* Wideband distributed amplifier covering DC – 6 GHz
* Up to 5 watts of CW RF output power
* High wideband DC to RF efficiency (typically 25%)
* 28 to 48-volt operating voltage range

CMPA2560025 GaN MMIC
* Broadband reactively matched amplifier covering 2.5 – 6 GHz
* Up to 25 watts CW RF output power
* Outstanding broadband DC to RF efficiency (typically 30-45%)
* 28-volt operating voltage

Cree’s product families include recessed LED down lights, blue and green LED chips, high-brightness LEDs, lighting-class power LEDs, power-switching devices and radio-frequency/wireless devices. Cree solutions are driving improvements in applications such as general illumination, backlighting, electronic signs and signals, variable-speed motors, and wireless communications.

For additional product and company information, please refer to www.cree.com.

THE EDGE Family of Products

LED lighting for general commercial and industrial applications:

• Efficiency
  
• Performance
  
• Longevity
  
• Style

THE EDGE features LEDs with a color temperature of 6000K and outputs of 80 lumens per watt - - two factors that make THE EDGE a viable option to replace high-intensity discharge (HID) sources.

About BetaLED

BetaLED, a brand of Beta Lighting, was established to dedicate resources to the emerging use of LED technology for general illumination. Beta Lighting, a division of Ruud Lighting, Inc., provides the lighting market with high-quality, specification-grade luminaires for exterior lighting applications. For additional exterior LED luminaire information, visit www.BetaLED.com.

Beta Lighting, a Ruud Lighting company, provides the lighting industry with high-quality, specification-grade luminaires for exterior lighting applications.

A new smokeless lighting technology that is set to replace pressure lamps used by Omena (sardines) fishermen in the 400 million-year old Lake Victoria is now available in Kenya.

Besides being handy for use, LED lighting technology is brighter than pressure lamps and is free from paraffin spillage that has dogged the lake for many years.

Unlike before when fishermen used over five pressure lamps to catch plenty of fish,  new technology now enables them to use only one source of lighting. 

Supplied by Osram Energy Hub, a German based firm, the rechargeable lamps are expected to cut paraffin spillage into the lake by 100 percent once adopted by all fishermen.

The move is expected to protect the aquatic life of more than 500 endemic fish species. Other low power devices such as radios and mobile phones can also be connected this battery box and recharged.

The firm also has complete luminaries such as the Osram O- lamp 2 in 1 which comprises an energy saving lamp that has an integrated battery that is recharged or exchanged at the Hub as a separate unit. 

The firm is collaborating with solarworld AG and the cell phone manufacturer Nokia and plans to cooperate with Siemens to provide water treatment systems after the pilot trial.