Page 38 - PEN eBook May 2023

DESIGN SEMICONDUCTORS

The highly efficient design achieves a peak efficiency
of 96.7%, and with the built-in baseplate, heat can
be dissipated by contact cooling or via a directly
attached heatsink. The fixed switching frequency
benefits EMI performance and permits simple
filtering where necessary.

The unit includes the advanced PMBus functionality
for configuration, control and monitoring and multiple
units may be used in parallel with the in-built active
current sharing. A range of valuable protections are
The effect of incremental efficiency improvements unlocks provided, including input undervoltage/overvoltage,
more power as overall efficiency increases. output overvoltage/overcurrent, and overtemperature.

incorporate the Power Management Bus (PMBus). LOOKING AHEAD
This was originally developed by several companies, The worldwide server market continues to show
including Artesyn Embedded Technologies (now strong growth with a 17% CAGR from 2022 to 2027,
part of Advanced Energy), as a standard means of according to Dell’Oro Group’s Data Center IT Capex
communicating with a power device over a digital 5-Year Forecast Report (January 2023). The largest
communication bus, allowing a system processor to users have in excess of 3 million installed servers,
configure, control and monitor voltages, currents and and some companies are projected to reach over
temperatures. 10 million installed servers by 2027. Indeed, servers Building Semiconductor
represent a very significant percentage of energy use
This has significant benefits during the design phase globally, and their share of DC capex is predicted to
and can be valuable during operation to confirm that grow to 57% by 2027. Capacity for a Hotter,
the system is working as expected, as well as give early
warning of any impending faults by monitoring the This sheer scale of global data center operations
function of power conversion from within the power underlines the huge benefits of even small gains in Drier World
module. efficiency, with every single watt of power saved in
power-conversion losses representing not only 1 W
Current sharing is an important feature that allows less to be supplied but also 1 W less that requires By Katherine Bonamo, contributing writer for Power Electronics News
the outputs of several bricks to be combined to cooling by data center cooling solutions.
deliver higher power. Passive (aka “droop”) sharing is As recently as four years ago, few economists would trigger heavy downpours in some areas while
the simplest approach, as it does not require bricks Power technology must continue to advance to have predicted some of the major news items of the exacerbating drought in others.
to be interconnected with a current-share bus signal make servers fit for the future in terms of efficiency, past few months. Few would have expected to see Ford
and it is relatively immune to startup inrushes and size and overall energy usage. The choice of converter blame a quarterly-sales shortfall of 100,000 vehicles on The potential for these issues to collide is clear. The
other transients. However, it has limitations. The most technology is critical to transform the emerging its inability to buy the right microchips. And still fewer semiconductor industry is water-intensive: A single
significant is the need for a softer output voltage load 48-V intermediate bus to the conventional 12 V that might have expected a spike in semiconductor fab fab’s needs can run into the tens of millions of gallons
regulation characteristic that results in greater than continues to be required. Additional innovations construction within the borders of the United States. per day, outpacing the household requirements of a
200 mV of “droop” required to enable accurate load to those discussed in this article will address the But a global pandemic was enough to make just about small city. In drought-stricken Arizona, Intel and Taiwan
sharing between units. There is also the need for a increasingly demanding requirements in new and everyone guess wrong. Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TSMC) are
fold-back current-limit characteristic, as the standard emerging servers. both investing billions in new facilities—while farmers
overcurrent protection method of hiccup mode is not With the world’s reliance on microchips in sharp already face water rationing. Nor can chipmakers afford
appropriate in current-sharing applications. As a result, relief—and with a boost from the CHIPS and Science to ignore their overall carbon footprint—not when tech
active sharing to control and force units to share Act of 2022—semiconductor fab construction on giants Apple, Google and Microsoft have all committed
accurately is the preferred choice for regulated devices. U.S. soil is booming. The Semiconductor Industry to reaching net-zero emissions throughout the entire
Association reports that since 2020, over $200 billion supply chain.
TECHNOLOGY EXAMPLE from more than 35 companies has been pledged
One example of a modern brick converter intended toward chip-related manufacturing projects in the From this point of view, the boom in U.S. fab
for use in server applications is Advanced Energy’s United States. construction represents an opportunity as well as a
Artesyn NDQ900. This quarter-brick non-isolated challenge. To operate in a world where resources must
DC/DC converter unit provides a single regulated Meanwhile, a crisis longer in the making looms be conserved to the utmost, both new approaches and
low-noise output of 12.25 V from an input range of 40 just as large. According to the National Oceanic and long experience will be required. Luckily, both can be
to 60 VDC at continuous power levels up to 900 W Atmospheric Association, the last eight years have been found through design partnerships with sophisticated
(73.7 A). Advanced Energy’s Artesyn NDQ900 series 900-W the hottest on record, and the impact on the world’s suppliers like GF Piping Systems.
quarter-brick non-isolated DC/DC converter weather has been hard to ignore. High temperatures

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