Fast voltage regulators improve data centre energy efficiency

HIPS replaces silicon switches with GaAs in voltage regulators that increase switching frequency by 10 times, improve transient response by five times and reduce size by 80%. The fast, small voltage regulators enable granular power delivery to reduce data centre power consumption by 30%, says the company.

The collaboration was announced at the International Symposium on 3D Power Electronics, Integration and Manufacturing Symposium (13 to 15 June).   The 3D SiP enables GaAs switches, silicon driver and passive components to be integrated in a compact, low-profile package, claimed to minimises parasitics.

The collaboration with AT&S also provides a turnkey supply chain assembly and test flow with aligned roadmaps as well as design rules for 3D SiPs with embedded chip in substrate technology, says the company. Servers, routers and communications systems require new power management technology to keep up with the growth in data consumption and mobile connectivity. Power delivery and heat removal issues constrain system performance. Each system board uses dozens of voltage regulators which consume board space. Leading-edge processors now operate at less than 1V, which prevents designers from reducing operating voltage while increasing transistor density. Instead, they are heterogeneously integrating different materials and components to improve system performance-per-Watt. Small, fast voltage regulators enable granular power which reduces system power consumption through dynamic power management of each load. Miniaturising the voltage regulators also frees up board space for more processors and memory to increase system performance. Increasing system performance-per-watt decreases the system cost-per-workload.