New digital hot-swap and system monitoring controller IC

Continued demand for artificial intelligence (AI) services in High-Performance Computing (HPC) data centres is driving the market growth in this segment. Special-purpose AI accelerators facilitate an increase in the performance and efficiency of these data centres. Like in many critical infrastructure systems, reliability and high availability are essential and highly challenging. Developers of AI supercomputing platforms can only address these requirements with hot-swap solutions that monitor the power supply and protect the system even when components are hot-swapped.

Infineon Technologies tackles these challenges by introducing the XDP XDP710 digital controller, the first member of its intelligent hot-swap controller and protection IC family. The hot-swap and system monitoring controller IC has a 5.5V to 80V input voltage range with transients up to 100V for 500ms. It consists of three functional blocks. The first is the high-precision telemetry and digital safe operating area (SOA) control block, optimised to meet Infineon’s power MOSFETs characteristics. The second is the system resources and management block, and the third is the integrated gate driver and charge pump block for n-channel power MOSFETs such as OptiMOS and StrongIRFET families.

“Infineon Technologies’ XDP710 Digital hot-swap controller met HGX Platform product requirement well. Like its unique features such as option of external FET selection using resistor strapping and boost mode. It helps that XDP710 come in small package, easy to design in” said Abhijit Datta, Sr. Power Architect and Subject Matter Expert at NVIDIA

“The XDP710 hot-swap controller is a feature-rich device with high-precision analogue-front-end along with comprehensive health monitoring, telemetry, programmability, and pre-set MOSFET SOA. It addresses the challenges associated with the current design of pluggable AI server solutions,” said Shahram Mehraban, Vice President Power Management ICs at Infineon’s Power & Sensor Systems Division.

The key feature of the XDP710 controller is its advanced closed-loop SOA control and the fully digital operating mode. This leads to a lower bill-of-material (BOM) reducing the number of external components and design time, allowing faster time-to-market. The XDP XDP710 can also operate in Analogue-Assisted Digital Mode to support legacy systems.

The XDP XDP710 digital hot-swap and system monitoring controller IC is in production and available in a 29-lead (6 x 6mm²) VQFN package.