EL SEGUNDO, Calif. - Expanding on its industry leadership in power management, International Rectifier IR® NYSE: IRF) announced the opening of a new design center for analog Integrated Circuits (ICs) in Quonset Point, Rhode Island.

A team of design and applications engineers will focus on developing and prototyping advanced power management semiconductors and systems to provide benchmark efficiency and power density in next-generation desktop PCs, servers, motherboards and microprocessor-based equipment. High-speed, data-intensive tasks like streaming video and music editing demand increasingly precise power management, often at multiple voltages, and advanced analog ICs stand at the core of this enabling technology.

Alex Lidow, IR Chief Executive Officer said, "As computing equipment moves solidly into the gigahertz range, power requirements become crucial. IR is already positioned at the leading edge, powering Intel® SpeedStep^tm and AMD Athlon^tm notebooks, Intel Pentium^tm 4 servers, and Microsoft® X-box^tmtm. Now this operation expands our capabilities and our presence as 'the power behind the processor.'"

The laboratory is equipped with the latest computer-assisted design, layout and evaluation tools, as well as environmental and wafer-level testing facilities.

IR's IC Design Center is located in a high-tech enclave in close proximity to Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of Rhode Island, Boston University and other institutions.

High Resolution JPEGs are available in the Press Room.