Drop-in Solutions for Data Centre Power Upgrades

One of my favourite parts of being at exhibitions is meeting face to face with the people who are responsible for the new products being launched onto the market and talking about their motivations when specifying the products. It is even more interesting when these conversations go beyond the usual narratives. Data centres often come up in these discussions, and the perceived wisdom is that we will have a problem in the future getting to the power densities required for AI processing. Flex Power Modules’ Director of Marketing and Product Marketing, Olle Hellgren, shared a slightly different take on the situation when we talked at electronica, saying that data centre power designers were currently more concerned about solutions for the present, rather than years in the future.

At the moment, he sees a lot more customers struggling to upgrade their current systems to cope with increased demands than those implementing completely new designs. On top of that, they are having to cope with increasingly diverse requirements from the companies driving the industry. Hellgren explains, “Previously, the industry followed a more unified set of standards driven by one or two influential players. Today, a broader range of leading cloud service providers are each pushing for unique, tailored power solutions. Customers want to enhance their systems with more powerful processors, but they don’t necessarily want to overhaul their entire power system. They want to have the same level of simplicity of a drop-in replacement for power upgrades as they enjoy for processor upgrades.”

Hellgren was speaking about Flex Power Module’s BMR352, which was launched just before electronica. It is designed to be an intermediate-stage drop-in module that takes voltages from 40V to 60V and provides a regulated 12.2V output that can directly power peripherals in the system or serve as a step-down input for further voltage conversion. Its versatility also makes it ideal to be used as the basis for new designs for conventional CPU-powered boards and next-generation AI GPUs. With a peak power capability of 3KW and the ability to operate continuously at 2KW, the quarter-brick package offers a significant upgrade in power density and performance over previous generations, as well as peak efficiency of 97.9% at just over half load.

Talking about the design philosophy behind the BMR352, Hellgren said, “Around one-third of the design was driven by customer requirements, and the module offers further customization through its digital interface. Customers have long sought an intermediate conversion stage, as direct 48V-to-load conversion, while appealing in theory, has historically been too expensive. However, we have seen renewed interest in direct conversion for some specific designs. Additionally, the BMR352 is manufactured using silicon technology, which has helped to keep costs low while achieving performance levels comparable to GaN for sub-100V applications.”

PSD