Infineon announces roadmap for state-of-the-art and energy-efficient power supply units in AI data centres
The influence of artificial intelligence (AI) is driving up the energy demand of data centres across the globe. This growing demand underscores the need for efficient and reliable energy supply for servers. Today, Infineon Technologies opens a new chapter in the energy supply domain for AI systems and unveils a roadmap of energy efficient power supply units (PSU) specifically designed to address the current and future energy need of AI data centres.
By introducing unprecedented PSU performance classes, Infineon enables cloud data centre and AI server operators to reduce their energy consumption for system cooling. The innovative PSUs reduce power consumption and CO 2 emissions, resulting in lower lifetime operating costs. The powerful PSUs are not only used in future data centres but can also replace existing power supply units in servers and increase efficiency.
In addition to the current PSUs with an output of 3 kW and 3.3 kW available today, the new 8 kW and 12 kW PSUs will contribute to further increasing energy efficiency in future AI data centres. With the 12 kW reference board, Infineon will offer the world’s first power supply unit that achieves this level of performance and supplies future data centres with power.
Infineon is responding to the requirements of data centre operators for higher system efficiency and lower downtimes. The growth of server and data centre applications has led to an increase in power requirements, necessitating the development of power supplies with higher power ratings from 800 W up to 5.5 kW and beyond. This increase is driven by the growing power requirements of Graphic Process Units (GPU) on which AI applications are computed.
High-level GPUs now require up to 1 kW per chip reaching 2 kW and beyond by the end of the decade. This will lead to higher overall energy demand for data centres. Depending on the scenario, the International Energy Agency (IEA) predicts that data centres will account for up to seven percent of global electricity consumption by 2030; this is an order of magnitude comparable to India’s current electricity consumption.
Infineon’s new PSUs contribute to the efforts to limit the CO 2 footprint of AI data centres despite the rapidly growing energy requirements. This is made possible by a particularly high level of efficiency that minimises power losses. Infineon’s new generation PSUs achieve an efficiency of 97.5 percent and meet the most stringent performance requirements. The new 8 kW PSU is capable of supporting AI racks with an output of up to 300 kW and more. Efficiency and power density is increased to 100 watts per in³ compared to 32 W/in³ in the available 3 kW PSU, providing further benefits for the system size and cost savings for operators.
From a technical perspective, this is made possible by the unique combination of the three semiconductor materials Si, SiC and GaN. These technologies contribute to the sustainability and reliability of AI server and data centre systems. Innovative semiconductors based on wide-bandgap materials such as SiC and GaN are the key to a conscious and efficient use of energy to drive decarbonisation.
