Power delivery platform for AI and HPC applications
Empower Semiconductor has unveiled the Crescendo vertical power delivery platform to address the growing power demands of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) applications.
Based on the company’s proprietary FinFast™ technology, the Crescendo platform unlocks scalable on-demand true vertical power delivery for upwards of 3,000 A power domains, offering an unprecedented combination of system efficiency, current density and nanoseconds transient response.
As modern data center workloads increasingly demand more power and speed, existing power delivery architectures are no longer viable. To deliver high efficiency, traditional lateral power systems operate slowly, creating a large footprint of bulky power stages and magnetics on the topside of the PCB. The slow speeds also require large capacitor banks in the shadow of the processor, occupying the most power-sensitive real estate in the system and resulting in substantial lateral transmission power losses. The exponentially rising transmission losses due to the power increase of new AI chips create a critical impasse for the industry.
Crescendo eliminates the capacitor bank and energy storage requirements by providing energy on demand to the AI chip at unprecedented speed and accuracy. With the capacitors eliminated, Crescendo’s high-density and ultrathin thermally enhanced package fit in the critical area under the processor to deliver high efficiency, vertically coupled power to the AI chip and eliminate the prohibitive lateral transmission loss.
The FinFast™ technology operates with benchmark efficiency at high speeds utilizing cutting-edge silicon combined with novel control architectures, high-frequency magnetics, wide-bandwidth capacitors and best-in-class power packaging. The co-design of these innovative technologies enables the full integration of all power supply components, resulting in a dense and efficient AI power delivery offering.
“AI’s accelerating power requirements far outpaces the capability of today’s lateral power solutions, both in scale and speed. In developing the Crescendo platform, Empower enables generations of new AI processors to hit their performance goals while running efficiently and cool,” said Tim Phillips, founder and CEO of Empower Semiconductor. “With this introduction we are enabling efficient true vertical power delivery for our customers — and this is just the beginning, as the Crescendo platform will allow the integration of power delivery directly into the processor at total power supply densities exceeding 5-A/mm2.”
The platform offers the following benefits:
- Ultrafast Bandwidth — With 20x higher bandwidth than traditional power converter, the FinFast™ powered Crescendo platform essentially eliminates PCB-mounted high-frequency decoupling capacitors and relocates the active power delivery directly below the processor.
- Power Density — The Crescendo platform provides 5x higher total solution density for the same level of power, enabling truly vertical power delivery in 1-mm or 2-mm of height.
- Efficiency: Crescendo enables over 10% reduction in power delivery losses from traditional power delivery architectures. For a typical data center with 100,000 CPU instances, this results in a greater than 8-MW reduction in power loss.
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