Infineon's power ICs enables green computing designs by Super Micro Computer

Date: 18/10/2022
Massive growth of datacenters is forecasted in the next few years, and they consume lot of power and produce lot of heat. To tell you how big is the size of data estimated to be generated in the near future: US International Trade Commission finds 175 zettabytes of data is expected to be reached by year 2025. Presently around 8,000 data centers process, store and network these huge volumes of data.

To ensure the objective of green computing where the power consumption is reduced as much as possible and increase power conversion efficiency to highest level, power supplies used in data-center/server computers are designed by selecting semiconductor components supporting high efficiency and very less heat generation.

Super Micro Computer has selected semiconductor ICs from Infineon Technologies AG for designing power systems for server/datacentre computers.

“When developing our green computing platforms, we choose key vendors that share our focus on energy efficiency to reduce power consumption,” said Manhtien Phan, Vice President, Server Technology, Supermicro. “With Supermicro solutionsand Infineon technologies, you can decrease system power consumption, which lowers overall data center power utilization, minimizing impactto the environment.”

“Data center cooling is responsible for a large portion of energy consumption. Our energy-efficient TDA21490 and TDA21535 power stages are ideal for data centers to reduce heat dissipation,” said Adam White, President of Infineon’s Power & Sensor Systems Division. “These semiconductors providehigh-temperature tolerance and excellent reliability to enable free air cooling for the server to further improve the power usage effectivenesstothe customer’s data center and deliver more energy efficiency.”

Here is an explanation from Infineon on how to measure, how green is the power, and how Infineon' products helps in achieving that:
The power usage effectiveness(PUE) measurement divides the total power delivered to the data center by the actual power consumed by the IT equipment. An ideal PUE value is 1.0, which means that all the power required for a data center is in the actual computing devices, not in overhead costs such as cooling or power conversion. According to recent research , IT and data center managers reported an average annual PUE ratio of 1.57 at their largest data center, indicating there is room for improvement for uncontrolled cooling and power costs, along with reducing the CO2 footprint.

Supermicro’s green computing platform can significantly improve PUE. Specifically, the Supermicro MicroBlade family offers the best server density for a variety of processors, up to 112x 1-socket Atom nodes, 56x 1-socket Xeon nodes, and 28 x 2-socket Xeon nodes in 6U.This can be effortlessly deployed at scale and provisioned in volume with its data center-friendly features and designs, including free-air cooling and Battery Backup Power (BBP). The MicroBlade can provide up to 86 percentpower efficiency improvementand 56 percent density improvement when compared to standard 1U rackmount servers.

The MicroBlade server uses Infineon’s OptiMOS integrated power stages TDA21490 and TDA21535. The TDA21490 enables a robust and reliable voltage regulator design for high-performance xPUs, ASICs and SoCs used in server, memory, AI and networking applications. The device offers best-in-class efficiency with its OptiMOS power MOSFETs in a thermally efficient package. The low quiescent current driver enables a deep-sleep mode to further increase efficiency at light loads, and provides excellent current monitoring that significantly improves system performance. In addition to the robust OptiMOS MOSFET technology, the TDA21490’s comprehensive fault protection feature further enhances the system’s robustness and reliability.

The TDA21535 incorporates a low quiescent current synchronous buck-gate driver IC in a co-package with high- and low-side MOSFETs, and an active diode structure that achieves low values for the body-diode forward voltage (Vsd) similar to a Schottky barrier diode with very little reverse recovery charge. The internal MOSFET current measurement algorithm with temperature compensation in the TDA21535 achieves superior current measurement accuracy compared to best-in-class controller-based induction DC resistance measurement methods. Operation at a switching frequency of up to 1.5 MHz enables high-performance transient response and allows output inductance and capacitance to be reduced while maintaining industry-leading efficiency.

Author: Srinivasa Reddy N
Header ad