Georgia on My Mind

­Welcome to the March issue of Power Systems Design Europe. As I’m sure I mentioned in this page last month, I shall be making my first trip to the APEC Exhibition to have a look at some of the innovation in the power industry that is happening on the other side of the Atlantic. I’m really looking forward to travelling to Atlanta along with the rest of the PSD team. If your company will be at APEC and showing off some innovative technology, please feel free to drop me a message on ally@powersystemsdesign.com and we’ll see if it is possible to arrange a meet up on your stand.

The Special Report in this month’s magazine is on Power Supplies, the meat and potatoes of the industry. The only trouble with having such a comprehensive subject is where to start and stop. There are many different types of supplies, but almost all are facing the same challenges – thet require higher power handling capabilities, greater efficiency, smaller size and better thermal management. No industry exemplifies these challenges like the data centre market. Over the next few years, AI data centres will be migrating from Nvidia Hopper GPUs to the next generation Blackwell GPUs. Blackwell GPUs use almost double the power of the previous generation, and, at the same time, data centre operators are trying to get more and more GPUs on each rack. It would be hard enough to just power the same number of modern GPUs, never mind power many more of them. Just to make things even more interesting, there will also be less space available for the power solution.

The first article in this month’s special Report was contributed by Flex, and it looks at the challenges of powering data centres. The article goes into depth on the techniques and technologies that Flex uses to ensure its products are capable of meeting the challenges in data centres, now and in the future. These include new topologies, the integration of wide bandgap semiconductors and optimizing the layout of the system, for example, situating the voltage regulation under the processor on the PCB to reduce power plane resistance and increase current density.    

Nexperia contributed the second article in the Special Report this month. As mentioned above, today’s applications demand increased performance, going beyond the capabilities of even the best MOSFETs. When this scenario happens, it normally requires two or more MOSFETs to be used in parallel to handle the higher current demands, however there can also be drawbacks. The article looks at these challenges and shows how Nexperia can reduce the number of modules needed to be paralleled, while maintaining thermal performance.  

As well as the articles in the Special Report, this month’s issue will also feature general articles of interest to those in the power industry in our Tech Focus section, as well as the latest news and views from the industry.