As powerful AI chips increase in usage, a major concern of design engineers is supplying power in an efficient, timely manner. Empower Semiconductor, a supplier of integrated voltage regulators (IVRs), has unveiled the Crescendo vertical power delivery platform to address the growing power demands of artificial intelligence (AI) and high-performance computing (HPC) applications.

Modern data center workloads are increasingly straining existing power delivery architectures. 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, swallowing valuable board space and producing substantial lateral transmission power losses.

Tim Phillips, CEO and founder of Empower, said in an interview with Design News, “As the power required for AI chips grow, so is the need for power management. You need traces to carry lots of power. As current goes up, the pc board burns energy and there are massive losses. You get terrible regulation, and one winds up derating performance.”

According to Phillips, Empower has been working on a solution for several years, and finally developed a power platform, in the form of a voltage regulator, featuring a patented technology called FinFast. FinFast operates 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 technologies enables the full integration of all power supply components in a dense and efficient AI power delivery solution.

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The voltage regulator uses vertical power delivery to allow scalable on-demand power for currents upwards of 3,000 A. The technology eliminates the need for bulky capacitor banks and energy storage requirements. Without the capacitors, 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 prohibitive lateral transmission loss. 

According to Empower, the Crescendo platform provides 5x higher total solution density for the same level of power delivery, enabling vertical power delivery in 1 mm or 2 mm of height. It 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-megawatt (MW) reduction in power loss.

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Empower is now sampling the voltage regulator, with volume production slated for 2025.