SPECIAL FEATURE INTERVIEW
Exposure to contemporary technology, and the educational benefits that it brings, is unfortunately lost for a great many countries and their communities. However, Panasonic, collaborating with Raspberry Pi, hope to change that. Maximilian Jacob, department head of the distribution division, Panasonic Industry Europe, sits down to tell Electronics’ editor, Christian Lynn, how each company informs one another in this regard
Christian Lynn: How has the collaboration between Raspberry Pi and Panasonic benefitted both parties?
Maximillian Jacob: Well, Raspberry Pi is interested in the latest component technologies, those that are performance and cost efficient. Now, certain components are increasingly hard to come by: consider the influx and relevantly heavy allocation of MLCCs last year. We are also predicting a similar struggle with 5G and automotive sensors and modems, as these areas of the market are digitally embedded into society like solid concrete. With this in mind, Raspberry Pi sought a more independent means of procuring the appropriate modules for their ICs, to reduce the consequential risk of time and financial loss. This coincides with Panasonic’s input into Raspberry Pi’s wider project: to utilise our polymer technology - the SP-Cap and OS-Con polymer capacitors - away from the busy marketplace, as a replacement for the elusive MLCC. It works for Panasonic as computer science and motherboards – Raspberry Pi’s forte – is of interest to us, acting as a digital gateway for our polymer technology to thrive in various systems. Furthermore, it produces a new opportunity for the company: implementing the OS-Con and SP-Cap polymer capacitors into a low-cost product. But, ultimately, it was for the benefit of Raspberry Pi as, comparing the strength of polymer capacitors and MLCCs, the replacement is advantageous.
28 NOVEMBER 2019 | ELECTRONICS
While MLCCs are cheaper, polymer capacitors offer greater protection for the capacitance of the product: unlike MLCCs, whose capacitance depends on DC bias, due to it consisting of ferroelectric dielectric materials, polymer components strictly sustain the capacitance, so it does not fluctuate when the application’s voltage changes. This leads to an ease of design: the circuit can operate with a smaller power supply, for example, as the likelihood that charge will be lost is low. This reduces complications and, in the case of Raspberry Pi and its intentions – to provide computing services to impoverished countries – benefits the circumstances in which it is installed.
CL: What about the applications? Was this integration ethically or technologically motivated? In light of Raspberry Pi’s recent charity work in Cameroon, for example.
MJ: Well, the application itself is wholly suited to Panasonic’s push to lead within the IT market: Raspberry Pi’s computing project plays its own valuable role in this sector, so it can and has weaved into Panasonic’s developmental targets perfectly. Furthermore, ethically, both companies have similar aims, I believe. In this manner, it is to produce computing that helps at some level – for Raspberry Pi, it is to assist in the education of those from a poorer background, whereas Panasonic wishes to implement its various equipment, products and know-hows into an application that advances the customer’s design.
Our main mission, therefore, is a contribution to society: in order for a company to exist in the long-term, it must give something back to the community, in whatever form. That’s true in our wider ethos, but this collaboration can hopefully be seen as a microcosm for that: to enable Raspberry Pi to profit from our engineering, so as to go on and augment areas of civilisation that are not as fortunate as you and I, let’s say. Your reference to Cameroon is relevant to this point, as I hired a colleague a few years ago, a knowledgeable and loyal gentleman who originates from Cameroon. Subsequently, it made sense to commence this partnership with Raspberry Pi at the start of its humanitarian efforts in Cameroon, and it certainly acted as a source of encouragement for Raspberry Pi to invest in our polymer devices. But as much as Panasonic and Raspberry Pi wish to subsidise society with their electronic offerings, the cause itself reciprocates these efforts with its own subscriptions into the wider world: engineering is waning in interest with the younger generation, so the chance to promote and develop this subject at a scholastic level is self-fulfilling, emboldening prospective designers to invent the next innovative component or progressive process that might well supplement Panasonic’s own portfolio in the future.
Panasonic
www.eu.industrial.panasonic.com / ELECTRONICS
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