EL SEGUNDO, CA. March 1999 - International Rectifier (IRâ) today announced a significant upgrade to its industry-standard family of HEXFETâ power MOSFETs targeted at offline Switch-Mode Power Supply (SMPS) applications.

"With the addition of the new SMPS HEXFETâ power MOSFET family, IR continues to offer all of the high voltage power MOSFET products required for success in the SMPS marketplace," says Gabe Gotthard, VP of Marketing for the switch business unit at IR. "IR is already the longtime leader in this part of the market, which makes it important for us to maintain the highest levels of device technology and manufacturing leadership available. We are very pleased to offer a new family of devices which allows us to continue to cover the spectrum of cost and performance that is needed in today's SMPS applications."

The new series of SMPS-targeted HEXFET^® power MOSFETs is the successor to IR's industry-standard high voltage HEXFET^® family. An evolution of IR's existing manufacturing technology, the series was designed to continue to offer the benefits of IR's existing product line -- high volume manufacturability, high reliability, application-optimized performance, depth of offering, and multi-sourceability -- while offering improvements in R_DS(on) per unit area. The new technology has been used to create three distinct performance tiers of product, to serve three distinctly different sets of design requirements.

1) For applications that require the best performance available in any given package outline, IR now offers its "Benchmark Series" of SMPS power MOSFETs (which will also include CoolMOSä-type silicon in IR's "Super" series packages; see related news release dated 1 April 1999 for details).

2) For mainstream applications that require a significant improvement in R_DS(on) (30-40 percent) with multiple supplier capability, IR now offers a new generation of "High-Performance Series" SMPS HEXFET^® power MOSFETs in standard and IR-specific package outlines.

3) For existing applications that primarily require continuity of supply with existing specs, IR now offers a "Standard Series " replacement for its traditional family of industry-standard types. Using the same manufacturing technology as the "High Performance Series" types above, the new family will allow IR to continue to keep pace with market price/performance expectations. These new "Standard Series" types will be offered as replacements for the traditional types, and the nomenclature simply gains an "A" at the end of the existing part number: IRF840A (versus the traditional IRF840), IRFP450A (versus the traditional IRFP450), etc. IR will also continue to offer the older part types for customers who desire them.

All of the above-mentioned series feature devices that are available in volume production mode NOW or in the next 2-3 months.

The present product family is shown below:

New P/N	Package	BVdss	RDS(on)	Id	Samples	Production

IRFBL12N50A	Super-D2	500V	0.42 ohm	12A	Apr-99	May-99
IRFBA22N50A	Super-220	500V	0.23 ohm	22A	Apr-99	May-99
IRFPS37N50A	Super-247	500V	0.13 ohm	36A	Now	Now
IRFBL10N60A	Super-D2	600V	0.60 ohm	10A	Apr-99	May-99
IRFB9N65A	TO-220	650V	0.93 ohm	8.5A	Now	Now
IRFIB5N65A	TO-220 Fullpak	650V	0.93 ohm	5.1A	Jun-99	Jul-99
CoolMOS Technology	TO-220/247, Super-220/247	600V			tba May/June 1999

IRFB11N50A	TO-220	500V	0.52 ohm	11A	Now	Now
IRFIB7N50A	TO-220 Fullpak	500V	0.52 ohm	6.6A	Now	May-99
IRFP22N50A	TO-247	500V	0.23 ohm	22A	Now	Now
IRFR1N60A	D-Pak	600V	7 ohm	1A	Now	Now
IRFB9N60A	TO-220	600V	0.75 ohm	9.2A	Now	Now
IRFIB6N60A	TO-220 Fullpak	600V	0.75 ohm	5.5A	Apr-99	May-99
IRFSL9N60A	TO-262	600V	0.75 ohm	9.2A	Now	Now
IRFS9N60A	D2Pak	600V	0.75 ohm	9.2A	Apr-99	May-99

IRF730A	TO-220	400V	1.0 ohm	5.5A	Now	Apr-99
IRF740A	TO-220	400V	0.55 ohm	10A	Apr-99	May-99
IRF830A	TO-220	500V	1.5 ohm	4.5A	Apr-99	Apr-99
IRF840A	TO-220	500V	0.85 ohm	8A	Apr-99	May-99
IRFP450A	TO-247	500V	0.40 ohm	14A	Apr-99	May-99
IRFP460A	TO-247	500V	0.27 ohm	20A	Apr-99	May-99
IRFBC40A	TO-220	600V	1.2 ohm	6.2A	Apr-99	May-99
IRFPC50A	TO-247	600V	0.60 ohm	11A	Apr-99	May-99

"This product family introduction reflects our leadership position in the SMPS FET market," said Gotthard. "Since we have such a large share of the power supply market, we have a duty to provide a wide enough selection of parts to meet the needs of designers, and to responsibly and reliably deliver all those products in high volume. This new family of products already has over 20 types in it, in order to serve all of our customers' power ratings -- and these part types are functionally "tiered" according to what the designer needs most. The new family is designed and manufactured using proven equipment and technologies, so that it can be supplied reliably in high volumes and at reasonable cost."

"The new High Performance Series of SMPS HEXFET^® devices enable the designer to achieve performance improvements without significantly redesigning his present system -- and the Benchmark Series allows even greater improvements with a little bit of design work," says Gotthard. "If you compare these to the industry-standard device types in any given outline, the new products feature R_DS(on) values that are up to 50 percent lower."

Note that in addition to the normal 500 and 600V types, IR has added devices at 650V, to better serve the needs of certain SMPS applications that require slightly more voltage margin, such as single transistor PFC front ends.

"Response to our new family of SMPS HEXFET^® power MOSFETs has been fantastic. We have design-ins at virtually all of our major power supply customers, and are already supplying parts to them in volume. The production ramp-up of this product line has been smooth and flawless," said Gotthard.

Less evolutionary and more revolutionary, IR also announced separately that it has reproduced the performance of the benchmark-performance "CoolMOS" devices like those offered by Infineon Technologies AG (a fully-owned subsidiary of Siemens AG). IR says that they replicated the technology in order to better understand its implications in the high voltage market. (See related news release dated 1 April 1999 for details.)