Amid the craze for generative artificial intelligence, energy saving and high efficiency have also become popular

According to The New Yorker, Alex de Vries, a data expert at the Dutch National Bank, estimated that OpenAI's chatbot ChatGPT consumes more than 500,000 kilowatt-hours of electricity every day to process about 200 million user requests, which is equivalent to more than 17,000 times the daily electricity consumption of American households.

In an interview with the media, Musk predicted that the AI ​​industry will experience a power shortage next year, when there will be "not enough electricity to run all the chips."

According to the US Uptime Institute, by 2025, the share of artificial intelligence business in global data center electricity consumption will surge from 2% to 10%.

Updated processor design can significantly reduce energy consumption

In a typical server rack, the computing chips alone can consume more than 50% of the power budget.

Arm CEO Rene Haas recently published a signed article stating that today's data centers already consume a lot of electricity - the world needs 460 terawatt hours (TWh) of electricity per year to support, which is equivalent to the electricity consumption of the entire Germany. The rise of AI is expected to triple this number by 2030, which means it will exceed the total electricity consumption of India, the world's most populous country.

Future AI models will continue to get bigger and smarter, driving the need for more computing power and, as a part of a virtuous cycle, increasing the demand for electricity. Finding ways to reduce the power demands of these large data centers is critical to achieving societal breakthroughs and delivering on the promise of AI.

Rene said that choosing computing based on the Arm architecture can save more energy.

for example:

AWS Graviton based on Arm architecture: Compared with other products in the same industry, Amazon Sagemaker's AI reasoning performance is improved by 25%, web applications by 30%, databases by 40%, and efficiency by 60%.

Google Cloud Axion based on Arm architecture: Compared with traditional architecture, its performance and energy efficiency are improved by 50% and 60% respectively, which can support CPU-based AI reasoning and training, YouTube, Google Earth and other services.

Microsoft Azure Cobalt based on Arm architecture: It has 40% higher performance than similar products and supports services such as Microsoft Teams. The coupling with Maia accelerator drives Azure's end-to-end AI architecture.

Oracle Cloud uses the Arm-based Ampere Altra Max: it delivers 2.5 times the performance per rack server and 2.8 times the energy consumption compared to traditional counterparts, and is used for generative AI inference models such as summarization, tokenization of data for large language model training, and batch inference use cases.

Vertical power supply becomes popular

With the rapid development of technology, the demand for power supply technology in fields such as high-performance processors, artificial intelligence, and data centers is increasing. The current thermal design power is close to >1000 W. Since the energy required by artificial intelligence servers is three times that of traditional servers, and since data centers have consumed more than 2% of the global energy supply, it is necessary to pay attention to the efficiency of power supply. 48V and vertical power supply are new opportunities for the development of power supply.

Vertical Power Delivery (VPD) is a power supply technology designed specifically for high-performance processors. It reduces the PDN (Power Distribution Network) resistance by deploying the PoL module directly under the processor to meet the processor's needs for low voltage and high current. In addition, vertical power supply can also open the upper PCB circuit board for high-speed I/O and memory.

Schematic diagram of horizontal and vertical power supply

The bus voltage of 48V is also to reduce losses. Since P=VI, it means that when transmitting the same power, the higher the voltage, the smaller the current, thereby reducing losses in the line.

Since vertical power delivery has more stringent size requirements, modularization is a better option, which is what several IT infrastructure chip suppliers are doing.

As shown in the figure, compared with the discrete solution, the modular solution is not only compact in size but also more efficient at medium and high loads.

Vicor is a pioneer in the field of vertical power supply. Its vertical power supply solution combines the FPA (PRM+VTM) architecture, ZVS and ZCS control systems, high-frequency SAC current multiplier topology and SM-Chip packaging technology. Vicor's PRM regulator is implemented with a zero voltage switching (ZVS) buck-boost topology, which can achieve high efficiency when the input-output voltage difference is small. VTM uses a proprietary multi-megahertz ZCS/ZVS sine amplitude converter (SAC™) topology to efficiently convert the input voltage into a factorized voltage. Vicor's packaging technology integrates all passive devices, magnetic devices, MOSFETs and controllers into a single module while maintaining good cooling functions and frequency technology. Vicor's solution can bring more than 10% efficiency improvement, especially suitable for powering high-performance processors under high current conditions.

MPS is a relatively new data center power supplier. It also provides vertical power supply solutions for data center applications. It adopts a two-level solution. The first-level solution: MPS LLC power module has an input-output ratio of 10:1. The second-level solution uses a digital multi-phase controller + low-voltage Intelli-Phase or Intelli-Module. The Intelli-Phase series provides a continuous current rated up to 90A, and the Intelli-Module solution provides a continuous current rated up to 170A. Although MPS's solution is a traditional power supply solution, its efficiency and size are well controlled due to its advantages in control methods, switching tubes and packaging, which can meet the needs of vertical power supply.

As a traditional power supply company, Infineon Technologies has recently launched the OptiMOS dual-phase power module TDM2254xD series to enter the vertical power supply market. The dual-phase power module integrates two OptiMOS 6 power stages as well as inductors and capacitors on a single substrate. This level of integration reduces the two-phase deployment area of ​​a multi-phase buck regulator by 40% compared to equivalent discrete solutions. Infineon's dual-phase module uses a proprietary top inductor design to improve thermal and electrical performance.

This product has the following advantages:

Industry-leading power density: 10x9x8 mm or 10x9x5 mm with 160 A peak current

Enables vertical power delivery, reduces PDN losses and increases power density

2% more efficient than competitors at full load

Cools the heat up to 5°C cooler at full load than competitors

Best-in-class total cost of ownership

The TDM22544D is a powerful power module, the core of which is an improved high-speed MOSFET driver. This driver is carefully designed to effectively drive the co-packaged high-side and low-side OptiMOS MOSFETs at frequencies up to 2 MHz. This design greatly improves the efficiency and response speed of the power module, making it perform well when handling high-frequency and high-intensity power requirements.

In terms of current sensing, the TDM22544D abandons the traditional DCR sensing and Rdson sensing methods and adopts advanced current mirror sensing. This innovation solves the sensitivity of current sensing to inductor temperature changes in traditional methods and the difficulty of implementing RDSon current sensing on the high-side MOSFET. By mirroring the high-side and low-side current MOSFETs on the sensing MOSFET, the TDM22544D achieves true and accurate current sensing without the need for additional temperature compensation circuits. This design ensures that the system can monitor the actual output current in real time and respond quickly to critical events such as load steps or overcurrent faults.

In addition, the TDM22544D also has excellent temperature monitoring capabilities. It can report accurate temperature with a gain of 8 mV/°C, which helps the system to achieve active real-time temperature monitoring. By connecting the temperature outputs of multiple power stages, it can report the maximum temperature to Infineon's digital PWM controller, ensuring that the system can maintain stable performance under various operating conditions.

In terms of control, the PWM input of the TDM22544D is compatible with the industry standard 3.3V three-state PWM input, making it easy to integrate into a variety of systems. By responding to the PWM three-state signal sent by the controller, it can enable the body braking mode, quickly disabling the two MOSFETs in the power stage to enhance transient performance or provide high impedance output. In addition, it also supports diode emulation mode to improve light load efficiency by preventing conduction losses caused by negative inductor current.

In terms of energy saving, the TDM22544D introduces a deep sleep power saving mode. When the module is in deep sleep mode, the driver disables most of the functional circuits, thereby significantly reducing power consumption. This feature enables the TDM22544D to save a lot of energy when it does not need to run at full power.

Finally, the TDM22544D also has a full range of protection functions. This includes VCC/VDRV undervoltage lockout (UVLO), thermal protection shutdown for internal overheating conditions, phase fault detection of shorted high-side MOSFETs, and cycle-by-cycle overcurrent protection due to overload conditions or saturated output inductors. These protection measures ensure that the TDM22544D can maintain stable and reliable operation under various extreme working conditions.