Texas Instruments (TI): Can the pain points of big data centers be solved so far

Texas Instruments (TI): Can the pain points of big data centers be solved so far?

TI Chip technology enables big data centers in China's new infrastructure

September 28, 2021 / PRnewswire / -- Since the COVID-19 outbreak in 2020, a number of new business models such as telecommuting, online education, fresh e-commerce, and unmanned delivery have seen rapid development. Behind these business models, there is clearly more data generation and flow -- and the importance of big data centers as one of the seven areas of new infrastructure has increased further.

Yet 40 per cent of the world's data centres are now concentrated in the US, almost five times as many as in China. Obviously, the number of Internet users in China is much higher than that in the United States, which means that China has a huge potential of big data center market and development prospects. However, the construction of big data center is a typical asset-heavy project with a very long construction cycle and investment return cycle. It has a long industrial chain, including servers, routers, switches, optical modules, power supplies, software, networks, computer rooms, etc. Obviously this is a pretty high bar.

Compared with the huge construction costs, the subsequent operating costs are a bigger headache for operators, with electricity accounting for more than 50%, depending on the energy efficiency of each data center. High power consumption is the bane of data centers' woes.

From the technical point of view, with the continuous increase of data throughput and diversified development of tasks, not only the performance of processors is constantly improved, but also the diversity of processors. In addition to the traditional CPU, FPGA, GPU, Arm and other processors are widely used, and the power supply system needs to meet the needs of different processor types as far as possible. Secondly, signal transmission with high bandwidth and low delay is required, which makes the system design more complicated.

Higher energy efficiency, higher power density power conversion

Almost all of the electricity consumed by the data center is converted from the mains alternating current. The AC input is first rectified and then adjusted to a predetermined voltage level by the PFC circuit. The downstream isolated DC/DC converter converts the high voltage DC voltage to the low voltage DC voltage required by the server, and then performs the next DC voltage conversion for the core power supply voltage of the memory and processor.

One of the most important aspects of greening is to reduce the amount of electricity consumed during power conversion.

In the PSU industry, the energy Star 80PLUS standard has been upgraded from gold to platinum and now to titanium since it went into effect in 2007, requiring increased power conversion efficiency. However, efficiency gains are slowing as the performance of traditional silicon MOSFEts approaches their limits. The industry began to adopt the bridgeless totem pole PFC topology to improve the efficiency of PSU. But no bridge faults of the totem pole is the soft switch control complex and high cost of drive and zero current detection circuit, and silicon MOSFET body diode reverse recovery slower, the totem pole PFC can not work effectively in continuous conduction mode, and have good high frequency work of gallium nitride (GaN) technology can better realize the bridge design of PFC totem pole.

TI offers LMG3422R030, the latest generation of TI GaN with integrated drive, protection and reporting capabilities. This high integration supports lower common source and lead inductance, ideal for high frequency operation, resulting in lower gate and switching losses for increased efficiency. In addition, the device uses a compact SMD package with a low parasitic lead effect, which makes the device very stable and reliable. These unique features enable power engineers to easily meet the high energy efficiency requirements of server Psus, such as the 80PLUS Titanium standard, while achieving higher power density and reliability.

Simplify data transfer design

PCIe is currently the most widely used data exchange bus, because of its important role in data exchange, so its standard upgrade is also the fastest change. PCIe, however, the high speed signal in transmitted through long PCB go line or cable, major challenges facing to maintain signal integrity, customer need to select the low loss material on one hand, the other signal regulating elements are needed to improve the transmission path, in PCle 4.0, signal regulating function was first written directly into the basic PCle specification.

Simplify operations

Data centers must maintain critical operations and data transmission. As the power of data centers increases, so does the challenge to system reliability. Therefore, backup power is necessary. The power multiplexing circuit can automatically select or switch between the main and standby power rails. TI's combination of load switches and eFuse products provides users with flexible power multiplexing solutions. TI's eFuse product family meets UL 2367 and IEC 62368-1 safety certification and supports up to 70A current. Overcurrent responses can be intelligently managed by distinguishing transient events from actual failures, allowing the system to operate uninterrupted during line and load transients without compromising the robustness of fault protection. The device can be configured to remain locked or automatically retry after a failure is closed, which enables remote systems to automatically recover from temporary failures while ensuring that the power supply is not stressed indefinitely by continued failures.

Other than pain points, what else?

In order to better support the development of China's new infrastructure large data centers, TI is as much as possible to provide more comprehensive solutions for server system, in addition to the above several products, including TI the second generation of GaN devices, one-way load power supply, low speed I2C extension, temperature sensors, current sensors, convenient one-stop customer choice, Simplify user design, procurement, stock and other aspects.

Meanwhile, TI has three R&D centers in Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen in China. TI has cooperated with mainstream OEM server vendors in China, and also cooperated with mainstream ASIC suppliers at home and abroad to develop suitable power supply system reference design.

The era of mobile Internet has brought a surge in data. It is said that data is the oil of the digital age, so the big data center is equivalent to the oil refining equipment, from which more services for information technology and the value of the digital society are mined.

Today, TI has been in China for 35 years. When the data flood comes, TI always helps China's new generation of digital pioneers to solve problems and challenges by providing a complete range of analog and embedded products, strong local manufacturing and r&d capabilities, and product distribution and sales network throughout the country.

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Source: Texas Instruments