GaN Power Devices: Ready for Prime Time?

A couple of weeks ago International Rectifier (IR) introduced two Gallium Nitride (GaN)-based power device families (iP2010 and iP2011) designed for multiphase and point-of-load (POL) applications including servers, routers, switches and general purpose POL DC-DC converters.

IR claims GaN-based power devices can provide improvements in key application-specific figures of merit (FOM) of up to a factor of ten compared to silicon-based technology platforms.

IR won’t have the market to itself. Efficient Power Conversion (EPC) on March 5 announced a family of power transistors based on GaN-on-Silicon technology that spans a range of 40 Volts to 200 Volts, and 4 milliohms to 100 milliohms. Interestingly, EPC is a startup headed by former IR CEO Alex Lidow.

Will GaN transistors now displace power MOSFETs in the same way MOSFETs came along to displace the bipolar transistor twenty five years ago?

What do you think?