Power trends: IoT drives the move to software defined power – CUI
“What we’ve seen shifting is that power itself is moving from an afterthought or a black box at the end to the forefront of a designs – it’s now a platform decision and technology decision for a company and a lot of that is tied to digital power,” he said “Companies are looking for a system that they can cut and paste into their own products and that is as flexible as possible. They are using FPGA and processors that adapt to changing markets and they need that same flexibility from their power systems.”
The other element is just how complex today’s equipment is becoming, with 40 to 50 power rails, 20 layer boards and a mix of high speed data and sensitive ASICs, he says. “This means engineers are having to consider how they will power all this earlier in the process as the sensitive loads and how to get rid of the heat with all this technology packed into the same space. A lot of challenges are coming from multiple directions.”
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“The other thing we are seeing is that the power specialist engineer is becoming a dying breed – there’s a lot more generalists,” he said. “A lot of this happened in the 2008 meltdown and they are not being hired back so the onus is on the supplier to add that level of expertise – it’s an opportunity for a power company to differentiate themselves and support the customer.”
CUI, currently seeing turnover of $65m a year, has been around since 1989, and in the power industry since 1991. It was historically privately owned, but in 2008 it was bought by a holding company, CUI Global, that includes the Orbital oil and gas operation. “That acquisition allowed us to shift gears and has shaped our strategy going forward,” said Schnabel. “On the power side we were one of the first to go into digital power, licensing from PowerOne.”
“What’s really a challenge is how to power these advanced FPGAs,” he said. “With voltages at 0.6V and below and drawing current of 100 to 150A and beyond, the tolerances required are 1% or 0.5%. So when you have big transients and load shifts or loads spikes, that’s really challenging. OEM’s do a lot of their own discrete designs but to do all of that in a tight space is really tough. We have the expertise and what we are driving is keeping up with the efficiency. We are up to 97, 98%, and there is a question on how much higher can you go, but every 0.1% does make a difference.”
The Internet of Things (IoT) is also having a major impact on power design. “We have our internal Power of Things approach – the IoT will have a huge impact on power with sensors drawing power, and all these devices are now smart and drawing power,” he said. “There’s also continued regulation as governments look at the power draw that will happen, so at the device level alone there’s huge opportunities.”
This extends up into the infrastructure as well. “One of our big plays is in infrastructure with data centres with zetaabytes of data and that has huge implications. On the infrastructure side is the idea of software defined power (SDP) – it’s the next evolution of power. With digital power you have these islands of power – SDP ties that together at a higher level. We have partnered with Virtual Power Systems working on the software for SDP solution for data centres to drive the virtualization of power.”
One of the big issues is capacity utilisation, he says. Data center operators over-provision the power to support peak use, so the infrastructure is only really used at 60% in order to cope with the spikes of power. Using virtualization to provide the power where and when it is needed can greatly reduce capex and opex spending and the amount of equipment to power the infrastructure – racks of power supplies can be replaced with racks of servers to boost the compute capacity.
Within the hardware is a 4U power system with a battery backup built in. This provides the ability to use ‘peak fade’ so instead of building a 10kW because you need it at peak, you can build in 6kW and use the battery back up at peak times and recharge when the peak comes back down. This means operators are able to shave the peaks and remove 4kW of infrastructure. This has a huge benefit in capex when you are building the data centre but also gains in opex and reduce the thermal envelope as cooling is a huge issue.
“The great thing is these are plug and play so they can be installed into the existing infrastructure in weeks rather than months or years, he said. “It supports greenfield design but is also plug and play so an operator can quickly realise the gains.”
CUI works very closely with key suppliers such as Intersil and is concerned about the impact of consolidation. “The industry is still very fragmented but one impact of consolidation is the onus of expertise being on the supplier,” said Schnabel. “When you have consolidation there’s collateral damage on customer support, particularly for the Tier two and tier three customers, and a lot of times they are going to be driven elsewhere or not able to be supported at all.”
“When there’s consolidation there’s a slower pace of innovation while they are integrating – you have companies that did have compelling IP the roadmap or schedule slows down while they work through the growing pains,” he said.
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