Abstract
As new technologies emerge data centers and servers have established themselves as one of the largest and fastest growing consumers of power. While switched capacitor converter topologies have some very attractive features, namely low reliance on magnetic components and high efficiency, several critical factors have prevented their adoption in high current data center applications. The family of converters proposed are novel intermediate bus converter that demonstrates the highest performance yet achieved for 48 V to 12 V conversion with up to 2.5 kW/in <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> power density, higher than 99% peak efficiency, and 97.2% full load efficiency for 12 V/70 A output. The reduction of voltage stress across the MOSFETs as well as extremely low reliance on magnetics are the key driving factors behind this high efficiency and power density, and are achieved without a sensitive resonant design or the usage of complex control technique.
Highlights
As new technologies emerge data centers and servers have established themselves as one of the largest and fastest growing consumers of power
Cutting edge data centers have transitioned from traditional 12 V distribution to the server rack to a higher 48 V distribution. This offers several advantages in terms of upstream distribution losses, and substantially reduced transmission losses, but does present a challenge at the point of load where voltages as low as 0.8 V at currents above 1 000 A can be required. This extremely high step-down ratio is very challenging for conventional converter topologies, and a two-stage conversion approach is generally utilized such as the intermediate bus architecture (IBA)
The zero inductorvoltage (ZIV) converter is a converter that maintains the key advantages offered by switched capacitor converters, namely extremely low reliance on magnetic components, without any of the drawbacks traditionally associated with switched capacitor converters operating at high current levels
Summary
Cutting edge data centers have transitioned from traditional 12 V distribution to the server rack to a higher 48 V distribution This offers several advantages in terms of upstream distribution losses, and substantially reduced transmission losses, but does present a challenge at the point of load where voltages as low as 0.8 V at currents above 1 000 A can be required. This extremely high step-down ratio is very challenging for conventional converter topologies, and a two-stage conversion approach is generally utilized such as the intermediate bus architecture (IBA).
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