How Gan technology is utilised in data centers?

Today’s data centers are experiencing an influx of pressure thanks to rising demands, increased cooling costs and the need for more sustainable operations. Turns out, despite establishing the foundation of the electronics industry and dominating for decades, traditional silicon – based power systems are struggling to keep up with these demands. They expend more heat, thereby driving  up the bills and infrastructure costs.

Enter gallium nitride (GaN for short), a lighter, more compact material that has high switching frequency, resulting in higher efficiency as well as lower heat output, therefore less heat more performance. This blog covers how gan is a reliable alternative for silicon in terms of facilitating continuous high-load operations.

Key Applications in Data Centers

SMPS (Switched More Power Supply): Gan technology improves conversion efficiency from AC grid power to DC for server racks.

POL (Point of Load) Converters: They sit on the server board to regulate voltage, gan facilitates more compact and efficient voltage regulation.

High Performance Computing (HPC) and AI Clusters:  Workloads that stem from AI require high, stable power with less latency, thanks to gan’s fast switching frequency and low EMI, such workloads are efficiently deliverable.

Sustainable Benefits:

Since gan expends less heat, it wastes less energy reducing the carbon footprint and since it has the advantage of less heat expenditure it reduces the need for fans, chillers and liquid cooling. The compact design means fewer materials used and a reduced sprawl in hardware which also aligns with ESG goals for cloud providers and hyperscalers.

Future Outlook

This is just the beginning for gan technologies, big players like navitas, infineon, and Transphorm have been putting their RnD into the mixer, developing data center-grade GaN ICs. Moreover cloud giants such as Amazon, Microsoft and Google are actively researching on gan powered infrastructure, seeing merit in its sustainable and energy efficiency benefits. With rising workloads for data centers such as AI and 8K streaming, gan will be a key efficiency enabler.