Texas Instruments (TI) has unveiled a complete 800-volt direct-current (DC) power architecture for next-generation artificial intelligence data centres, developed in collaboration with Nvidia and supporting its 800 VDC reference design.
The architecture targets the growing power demands of AI workloads, which TI says are pushing traditional power distribution approaches to their capacity limits.
TI describes a two-stage conversion approach that simplifies the power path by requiring only an 800V-to-6V isolated bus converter, which steps down high voltage while maintaining electrical isolation, followed by a 6V-to-sub-1V multiphase buck converter for GPU core power.
The company's 800V-to-6V DC/DC bus converter features integrated gallium nitride (GaN) power stages, a semiconductor technology suited to high-efficiency, high-density power conversion, and TI claims it delivers 97.6% peak efficiency with a power density exceeding 2,000 watts per cubic inch for compute tray applications.
Additional reference designs include an 800V hot-swap controller, a 6V-to-sub-1V multiphase buck with dual-phase power stages, and an 800V-to-12V DC/DC bus converter.
TI also highlights a 30-kilowatt 800V AC/DC power supply unit and an 800V capacitor bank using electric double-layer capacitor (EDLC) supercapacitor cells with 40 watts per cubic inch power density, which can provide short-term energy storage to handle sudden load spikes.
Kannan Soundarapandian, vice president and general manager of high-voltage power at TI, said the exponential growth of AI computing demanded a fundamental rethinking of how power is delivered in data centres.
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TI said its broader portfolio, including solid-state transformers and rack-level power components, is aimed at accelerating development and deployment of AI and edge data-centre infrastructure.
The company is demonstrating the architecture at NVIDIA GTC and at its own booth.
The recap
- TI unveils complete 800 VDC data-center power architecture
- 800V-to-6V converter achieves 97.6% peak efficiency and >2000W/in
- TI will demonstrate solution at NVIDIA GTC and booth 169
