Vertical power delivery for AI chips
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Empower Semiconductor has developed a vertical power delivery platform using its silicon capacitor technology.
The Crescendo vertical power delivery platform developed by Empower for high-performance computing (HPC) and AI applications up to 3000A. This uses Empower’s proprietary FinFast technology with nanosecond transient response times.
Modern data centre workloads increasingly demand more power and speed and existing lateral power delivery architectures are no longer viable. To deliver high efficiency, traditional lateral power solutions operate slowly, creating a large footprint of bulky power stages and magnetics on the topside of the printed circuit board (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 using silicon capacitors in an ultrathin thermally enhanced package that fits in the critical area under the processor. This enables high efficiency, vertically coupled power to the AI chip and eliminates the prohibitive lateral transmission loss.
FinFast combines a new control architectures, high-frequency magnetics, wide-bandwidth silicon capacitors and power packaging to provide a bandwidth 20x that of traditional power converters.
“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 5A/mm2, setting Empower apart as the technology leader.”
The Crescendo platform provides 5x higher total solution density for the same level of power delivery, enabling truly vertical power delivery in 1mm or 2mm of height. It also provides a 10% reduction in power delivery losses from traditional power delivery architectures. For a typical data centre with 100,000 CPU instances, this can be as much as an 8MW reduction in power loss says Empower.
Empower Semiconductor will be showing the Crescendo platform for the first time at the 2024 OCP Global Summit in San Jose, California from October 15-17, 2024.