Tom Curatolo is the director of applications engineering for Vicor Corp. He joined the company in 1989. He holds a BSEE from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, Worcester, Mass. Email address: tcuratolo@vicorpower.com
4 results found for Tom Curatolo, displaying items 1 - 4
September 11, 2008[Power Design] Applications Drive Component Power Designs
Power designers often prefer particular power products or manufacturers. Some designers try to drive these preferences into every application. That’s not surprising. Such choices are usually based on successful relationships with specific manufacturers. The designers already know the products, or they can rely on a level of reliability, on-time delivery, or good prices. Many suppliers of dc-dc converters offer common input and output voltages, power levels, and features....
June 12, 2008[Power Design] The Polymorphous Landscape Of Bus Voltages
Voltages are bussed around all the time, but the applications and voltage levels are many and diverse. One of the high-voltage apps du jour, for example, is the data center. Everybody knows about the phenomenal rise of the Internet over the last few years, but few think much about how all of the generated data gets stored and distributed. To enable this capability, the emergence and growth of datacenters or server farms—and the power they increasingly...
March 13, 2008[Power Design] Demanding Dynamic Loads: Can Power Devices Keep Up?
With each new generation of processor, the trend is toward lower voltages, higher currents, and faster dynamic loads. As a result, power-system designers are challenged to provide ever-faster transient response. They also have to do it using less board area while providing cost-effective and efficient power-systems solutions that offer the requisite performance. The question is if power devices can keep up. Power designers traditionally responded to the need...
September 1, 2007[POV: Point Of View] Examine The Thermal Implications Of Potted Versus Open-Frame Bricks
When I joined Vicor almost 20 years ago, the inventors of the brick told me that the planar surface of a base plate is optimal for removing or transferring heat and that potting provides an outstanding thermal interface around each component. When bricks first came out, in fact, all of them were encapsulated and fitted with attached base plates. Our philosophy at the time, as it is now, was to be as flexible as possible to enable designers to adapt the brick to many different...
