Major IC makers including Texas Instruments, NXP, Marvell, On Semiconductor, STMicroelectronics, and Microsemi announced new SSL driver technologies at Strategies in Light, and complementary enabling technology was prevalent on the exhibit floor.

The Strategies in Light (SIL) conference (Feb 22-24, Santa Clara, CA) played to a record crowd this year, and vendors of LED driver ICs and solid-state lighting (SSL) enabling technologies were prominent on the exhibit floor with demonstrations and new products. STMicroelectronics, Marvell, On Semiconductor, ad NXP semiconductor focused on retrofit lamps, while NXP and Texas Instruments (TI) had new drivers for backlight LED applications. Tyco Electronics, Microsemi, and Intematix, meanwhile showed recently announced module and remote-phosphor technologies for the first time.

Both the conference presentations (watch for detailed reports in our March issue of LEDs Magazine) and the exhibits at SIL covered a broad range of SSL-centric applications. Mainstream applications such as general illumination and backlighting were prevalent in talks and on the show floor, although specialty applications such as LEDs in life science and horticulture were also addressed. Attendees learned about advancements throughout the value chain from LED components to luminaire design techniques.

Much emphasis remains on LED retrofit lamps because those products are easily deployed in place of incandescent or CFL lamps. Indeed Philips showed its US Department of Energy (DOE) L-Prize candidate at one of the opening-day workshops on LED light quality. And Philips Lumileds