Voltage regulators promise to boost data centre efficiency

Article By : Sarda Technologies

Sarda, UTAC and AT&S team up to allow Sarda to implement its Heterogeneous Integrated Power Stage in UTAC’s 3D SiP based on ECP technology from AT&S to improve the energy efficiency of data centres.

Sarda Technologies (Sarda), a disruptive power management parts supplier, and UTAC Holdings (UTAC), a semiconductor assembly and test services providers in Asia, have announced a collaboration that will allow Sarda to implement its Heterogeneous Integrated Power Stage (HIPS) in UTAC’s 3D system-in-package (3D SiP) based on ECP technology from AT&S to improve data centre’s energy efficiency.

Designed to address the rapidly escalating power consumption in data centres, Sarda’s HIPS replaces silicon switches with gallium arsenide (GaAs) in voltage regulators that increase switching frequency by 10 times, improve transient response by five times and reduce size by 80%. With these fast, small voltage regulators, it enables granular power delivery to reduce data centre power consumption by 30%.

Servers, routers and communications systems require innovative power management technology to keep up with the growth in data consumption and mobile connectivity. But power delivery and heat removal issues constrain system performance. Moreover, each system board uses dozens of voltage regulators which consume precious board space.

Designers can no longer rely solely on Moore’s Law to deliver the needed gains in energy efficiency. Leading edge processors now operate at less than 1V, which prevents designers from reducing operating voltage enough to keep power consumption constant while increasing transistor density. Instead, developers are turning to “More-than-Moore Scaling,” which heterogeneously integrates different materials and components to improve system performance per-watt.

Small, fast voltage regulators enable granular power that reduces system power consumption through dynamic power management of each load. Miniaturising the voltage regulators also frees up board space for more processors and memory to increase system performance. Increasing system performance-per-watt decreases the system cost-per-workload.

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