panel

Revenue for chipmakers could reach $310 billion this year, helping the industry reach a record in sales growth, according to a report released Tuesday by iSuppli.

Stronger prices and ongoing demand for smartphones and flat-panel TVs will be the two driving forces behind the surge in sales, iSuppli said. The record revenue would represent a gain of 35 percent from 2009, better than expected and higher than iSuppli's May forecast of 31 percent growth.

"The semiconductor market already was in for beefy growth in 2010 because of strong consumer demand for electronic products," Dale Ford, senior vice … Read more

I've probably listened to and reviewed a thousand speakers, and truth be told, the majority of them never sound like live music. They sound like speakers.

The "problem" with box speakers is that you're always aware the sound is coming out of a box, but Magnepan speakers don't have a box. And they don't have dome tweeters or cone midrange or woofer drivers, either. Magnepan technology is radically different than what you find on box speakers, so the 1.7's sound "floats" free of the speakers themselves.

The new Magnepan 1.7 ($1,995 per pair) looks a lot like the model it replaces, the 1.6, which was regarded by many of the world's high-end audio critics, including me, as one of the greatest less-than-$2,000 speakers on the market. The 1.6 stayed in the line for more than 10 years, and I have every reason to believe the 1.7 will be a standard bearer for just as long. And speaking of value, Magnepan also offers a factory-direct $599 (per pair) panel speaker, the MMG. The technology isn't as advanced as the 1.7's, but it's miles ahead of any other $599 speaker I can think of.

The 1.7 panel is 64.5 inches high, 19.25 wide, and just 2 inches thick. Magnepan builds all of its speakers in White Bear Lake, Minn., and almost all the 1.7's parts that aren't fabricated in-house are sourced from U.S. suppliers. I reviewed the 1.7 for Tone Audio magazine, where you can read the complete review.

The 1.7's technology is unprecedented for Magnepan; the speaker is the company's first "full-range ribbon" design. It's also worth noting that what makes a well setup pair of 1.7s so special isn't just something that only dyed-in-the-wool audiophiles would notice; pretty much anyone with ears will immediately grasp what's going on. Their box-free sound is astonishing.… Read more

While many green connoisseurs relish the solar panels on their homes for their eco-friendly use, many architectural connoisseurs would rather be caught dead than put the awkward-looking devices on any part of a building they're associated with.

That will change if a new line of solar panels unveiled this week in Germany proves to work as great as it looks.

Chinese PV manufacturer Solarfun Power Holdings unveiled a new line of building-integrated photovoltaic (BIPV) modules Thursday that resemble skylights, windows, and mirrors.

The SolarIris BIPVs were shown to the public this week at a solar conference in Germany and … Read more

SunPower, a Silicon Valley manufacturer of high-efficiency solar cells, panels, and systems, announced Monday the debut of its its new SunPower E19 Series solar panels, a product lineup that offers an efficiency of 19 percent or greater.

The efficiency figure measures how great a percentage of the sunlight that hits a solar panel is actually converted into usable electricity. The higher the efficiency, the cheaper the cost of using solar energy.

Some companies have reached up to 42 percent efficiency in testing their products. Others have claimed even higher percentages in the lab. But most commercial silicon solar cells average … Read more

First Solar, the world's largest thin-film solar panel producer, has set up a Silicon Valley lab for a thin-film technology with the potential for higher efficiency at a lower cost, sources said.

A big move toward panels based on CIGS, or copper indium gallium diselenide, technology would mark a major shift for First Solar into an area pioneered by others and would also lend support to critics who see limited room to improve the efficiency of the company's current cadmium telluride panels.

The company has said its cad-tel panels can exceed 11 percent efficiency in converting sunlight to electricity, and it aims to improve that further.

First Solar acknowledged on Thursday it has a small research and development unit in Silicon Valley but declined to comment further.

The Arizona-based company made a name for itself with these thin-film panels that are less efficient than standard panels based on computer processor-style silicon semiconductors, but are much cheaper to produce per watt of output.

CIGS offers the hope of cheap thin-film production costs with efficiency near the best of silicon solar cells, which can be as high as 20 percent.

First Solar, which has never discussed its Silicon Valley operations publicly, has had a research and development unit there for a couple of years, five industry sources with knowledge of the operation said.

The company is looking at low-cost processes to manufacture CIGS panels, one of the people said, though two other sources said the CIGS research appears to be in its initial stages. … Read more

U.S. solar-panel manufacturer SunPower has signed an agreement to acquire SunRay Renewable Energy and its existing solar projects for $277 million, both companies announced Thursday.

The maker of high-efficiency solar panels said approximately $235 million of the deal will be in cash, which SunPower announced it already has in hand, forgoing the need to raise equity capital to finance the deal. The remaining $42 million will be in the form of credit and promissory notes.

SunRay, a European solar-power company, might be best known for its completion in November of the 24-megawatt Montalto di Castro solar-photovoltaic power plant, the … Read more

Every year product life cycles in the consumer marketplace grow ever shorter and we see ever faster turnover in cameras, phones computers, and so on. On the audio side, the latest and greatest receivers become yesterday's news faster than you can say "HDMI 1.4." It seems like no receiver can stay current for more than a year or so.

Speaker companies show a little more restraint and "refresh" their lines every few years, but even then new models rarely demonstrate actual performance improvements over the previous generations' models. Speaker manufacturer Magnepan doesn't play by those rules; it invests years of development in each of its models before introducing a new speaker. It has to sound better--a lot better--than the outgoing model before it's released to the world.

And not just in the opinion of the designers. New-model Magnepans undergo extensive "blind" listening tests with a wide range of audiophile and non-audiophile listeners (the listeners don't know whether they're hearing the old or new model). The new speaker must consistently score better than the old model before it goes into production.

When I first heard the Magneplanar 1.6 back in 2008 I said it was the best under-$2,000 speaker on the market. Incredibly enough it was 10 years old at the time! The Magneplanar 1.6 has stayed in production for 12 years, but now it's about to be replaced with the new Magneplanar 1.7.

Magnepan, based in White Bear Lake, Minn., builds nothing but panel (boxless) speakers. Not only that, Magnepan designs forgo conventional dome tweeters and cone-type woofers. As I pointed out in my August 14, 2008, blog that's why the company's Magneplanar 1.6 speaker mostly avoids sounding like a speaker. The speaker earned the top position in my Top 10 greatest audiophile speakers blog earlier this year.

The new Magneplanar 1.7 is also a flat-panel design, 64.5 inches tall and a mere 2 inches thick! The new speaker looks a little more contemporary, thanks to its aluminum, wrap-around edge molding. The old model was a two-way design, with a 48-inch-tall aluminum ribbon tweeter and a 442-square-inch mid/bass panel. The Magneplanar 1.7 is a three-way design, with a woofer, tweeter, and super-tweeter. The super-tweeter comes in around 10,000 hertz and is said to produce wider dispersion and better-resolved treble than the Magneplanar 1.6 did.

The other big difference is the Magneplanar 1.7 is a "full-range" ribbon design.… Read more

First Solar has produced and shipped 1 gigawatt's worth of photovoltaic solar systems for 2009, the company announced Wednesday.

Hitting the gigawatt mark--the equivalent of 1,000 megawatts or 1 billion watts--is significant as it shows a drastic rise in production and consumer interest. First Solar, which makes cadmium telluride solar cells and panels, produced only about 75 megawatts in 2007, and between 420 megawatts and 460 megawatts in 2008, according to the company's own statistics.

But the leap shouldn't be a surprise: the solar company has been signing massive deals with municipalities over the last year. … Read more

A year after first revealing its interest in Sanyo, Panasonic has finally won control of its electronics rival.

Panasonic said Thursday that it has secured a 50.2 percent majority ownership of Sanyo, as it moves to turn Sanyo into a subsidiary and create one of the world's largest electronics makers. To win its slice of Sanyo, Panasonic is paying 403 billion yen ($4.59 billion), or 131 yen per Sanyo share.

The deal gives Panasonic control of such Sanyo products as rechargeable batteries and solar panels, potentially lucrative businesses in light of the world's desire for greener … Read more