As deep learning proliferates, the question of data center power density is once again on the rise, creating new business opportunities for specialized cloud services, hosted in facilities that can support north of 30 kW per rack, and companies in the power conversion space, who can tackle the density issue by making systems more energy efficient.

A material that’s enabling better vision in self-driving cars, a better augmented-reality experience, and wireless power, is also promising extreme energy efficiency improvements in the data center. Replacing silicon as the semiconductor material in power conversion chips with gallium nitrate, or GaN, leads to much smaller and more energy efficient devices that provide much faster switching.

Training deep neural networks today requires powerful computers filled with GPUs. These machines need a lot of power, and data centers that host them have to be designed for high power density, similar to the way supercomputer data centers are designed. The radical energy efficiency improvements promised by GaN power converters on motherboards mean more computing power can be stuffed in a single data center cabinet, making the technology appealing to a whole range of companies in the data center space, from those in the hardware supply chain to operators of hyper-scale cloud platforms.

Cutting Conversion Losses in Half

Interest in what GaN devices can do for data center power density is “high across the board,” Steven Tom, product line manager at Texas instruments, said in an interview with Data Center Knowledge. According to him, the material “halves power losses” when used instead of silicon.

A company that has been a major force behind GaN chips in the power conversion market is El Segundo, California-based Efficient Power Conversion. One of EPC’s two founders is Alex Lidow, who is probably GaN’s most prominent and enthusiastic evangelist. In the semiconductor business for 40 years, he was one of the inventors behind the power MOSFET, a silicon transistor widely used for power switching in servers and many other types of electronics. Now he’s advocating for GaN transistors to push those silicon MOSFETs out.

See also: How Server Power Supplies are Wasting Your Money

TI, one of the world’s largest semiconductor companies, partners with EPC for its GaN devices, which it uses to build System-on-Chips, or SoCs. An SoC is essentially a single device that’s made up of multiple devices of different types. TI’s upcoming product for the data center market, for example, combines two EPC GaN transistors and other components into a single power-conversion chip.

Hyper-Scale Cloud Firms Dabble in GaN

TI has seen requirements come in for power distribution solutions for motherboards with multiple GPUs, Tom said. When they come in, customers don’t usually specify that they want GaN to be used, but the material has proven to be effective in addressing those requirements.

Operators of web-scale platforms hosted in massive data centers – companies that according to Lidow include Facebook, Google, and Oracle – have been buying GaN chips and exploring the technology, although they are not yet building it into their servers at scale. Artificial Intelligence and cloud are making data center power density an acute issue for these firms, and GaN-based power conversion is one potential solution, he said.

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