Powering a Green Future: Insights from Infineon’s Peter Wawer

05/16/23 • 56 min

Moore's Lobby: Where engineers talk all about circuits

Engineering careers, even very successful ones, don’t always progress in a nice orderly manner. In this episode of Moore’s Lobby, Peter Wawer, Division President of Green Industrial Power at Infineon Technologies, retraces a fascinating technical and business career that is still going strong.

As a second-generation electrical engineer, the industry still excites him. Wawer says that electrical engineering is “a fascinating topic” that allows you to “innovate and develop things to the greater good.” In his encouragement to the next generation of engineers, he states that “it's very rewarding tackling the issues and the challenges that we face” in society today.

Over the last decade, he has worked in power electronics at Infineon as they have invested and developed wide bandgap technology to serve important industries that are shaping our world: renewable energy, electrification, data centers, and more.

In addition to his extensive work on multiple leading-edge technologies, Wawer has been inside just about every corporate transition you can imagine. These have ranged from spinoffs and billion-dollar acquisitions to bankruptcy and government-rejected purchases.

When discussing major spinoffs like the creation of Infineon from Siemens, Wawer describes the “mixed” feelings within the company. Some view the larger company “as an advantage” by providing “more critical mass and more diversity.” While others see the benefits of a smaller company “being more focused.”

Wawer got started in the nascent silicon PV industry during his graduate studies and early career at Siemens. Then, after a number of years working on embedded Flash, he moved back into the solar industry; a time that he describes as “big fun” with the industry really beginning to take off.

In this Moore’s Lobby conversation with host Daniel Bogdanoff, Peter Wawer also discusses:

-The history and differences between thin-film and thick-film solar

-Why different semiconductor memory technologies—DRAM and Flash—are not fabricated in the same fabs

-Unique characteristics of trench and planar silicon carbide MOSFETs

-The performance and reliability challenges that impact power electronics beyond just the semiconductors

In this Moore’s Lobby conversation with host Daniel Bogdanoff, Peter Wawer also discusses:

-The history and differences between thin-film and thick-film solar

-Why different semiconductor memory technologies—DRAM and Flash—are not fabricated in the same fabs

-Unique characteristics of trench and planar silicon carbide MOSFETs

-The performance and reliability challenges that impact power electronics beyond just the semiconductors

Previous Episode

Burning Man Maker, Music Mogul, and PCB Revolutionary—Flux CEO Matthias Wagner

Matthias Wagner learned early in his career that not everything is like an engineering “marketing video...all so streamlined and perfect.” Sometimes you have to dive into a project with no documentation and no roadmap and “figure it out now.” That fearless, can-do attitude has led him on a circuitous and amazing route into, out of, and now back into the electronics world where he is leading Flux as they try to remake the PCB design flow.

While others have previously tried and failed, Wagner recognized that many of these were “too small of dreams to make any meaningful change...you just need to start from scratch.”

And yeah, that's scary. And it's a lot of work, don't get me wrong, it's very hard. But then what else were you going to do with your time that was worthwhile?

One of Wagner’s career pivots was out of the electronics industry and into the music industry. In this fascinating interview, Wagner reflects on that decision and states, “that was a really dumb idea at the time, but I made it work.” And, boy, did he ever! During his foray into the music industry, Wagner’s work sold over 1 billion units across the globe and was honored with platinum and gold records. His song, Axel F by Crazy Frog, has nearly 3.8 billion (yes, billion with a b) views on YouTube.

And we haven’t even mentioned his experiences developing energy systems for Burning Man that then lead to working at Facebook on products with billions of users. You will just have to listen to hear about those. And, after listening to this episode, you might be inspired to “give yourself permission to dream big dreams.”

Other highlights from this Moore’s Lobby interview with Matthias Wagner include:

-Why hardware engineers are jealous of software developers

-The competition between hard core gamers and general users when developing Oculus

-What the PCB and electronics industry can learn from developments in the music industry

-Learning how to run a business by NOT running a business

Next Episode

VC-Backed Hardware Design Collaboration is the (All) Spice of Life

In this unique episode of the Moore’s Lobby podcast, we get to hear from not only the technologists and executives behind the company but the investor who is helping them make their dreams a reality.

As an electrical engineer, Chrissy Meyer had spent years working in product design on large projects at Apple, including the Apple iPod Nano and Touch. She is all too familiar with the outdated methods of hardware collaboration and design reviews—printed schematics, highlighters, and engineers huddled around a conference room table.

According to Kyle Dumont, a first-time entrepreneur as Allspice CTO, their goal is centered “around making it easy to build a workflow and collaboration process for electronics designs.” In his earlier career working in hardware at both large and small companies, he also “became pretty frustrated with how difficult it was to collaborate on our electronics designs.”

Valentina Ratner, CEO of Allspice, goes on to explain that the industry is “trying to build colonies in Mars, and I don't think we're going to get there with Google Sheets and PDFs and screenshots.”

In her current role as a partner at Root Ventures investing in early-seed tech startups, the engineer inside Meyer had a “visceral” reaction when Ratner and Dumont explained their vision to bring Git-style collaboration software to the hardware world. Meyer explains that “there was never a doubt in my mind that this problem that they were describing was very real. Because the truth is I had lived it for 15 years.”

Meyer said, “I had to take off my engineering hat for a quick second and say, okay, reign in the excitement. Yes, this is a fantastic product for an engineer. Is this a great investment?...the truth is, there are far fewer electrical engineers than there are software developers.”

With the backing of Root Ventures, Ratner and Dumont founded Allspice and quickly got to work. As a first-time entrepreneur and CEO, Ratner admits that she had to learn a lot quickly because “there are just so many unknowns.”

Reflecting on some early lessons, Ratner shares some interesting advice for fellow tech entrepreneurs:

“It's less about convincing anyone and more about finding the people that already believe in the version of the world that you're trying to build.”

Other highlights of this round-table discussion include:

-Meyers’ belief that “'there's this common misconception that in order to approach VCs, you need to have a fully polished pitch deck, and you need a financial model and forecasts and projections.”

-Insights on one of the favorite features of Allspice: the ability to run digital, asynchronous hardware design reviews

-Where Meyer thinks hardware and software companies are going to win in the future