With the increase of data center power consumption, a resulting trend is the adoption of more 48V power systems. To support the growing demand for these systems, Samsung Electro-Mechanics offers a 1210i, 10uF, 100V, X7S MLCC which operates under higher temperature conditions. This MLCC is available for industrial and robotics applications which are also using 48V power systems.
The Rise of TDP (Thermal Design Power) in CPU, Memory, GPU
The expansion of Artificial Intelligence (AI) driven by big data means that data center companies are in need of more processing power, driving their need for processors with a higher number of CPU cores.
The resulting TDP of server CPUs has increased by more than 70% over the past 3 years and is expected to reach 350~400W in 2022 for new server CPUs.
Additionally, memory module TDP is increasing with the faster speed offered by DDR5 and is also accelerating the consumption of power (See figure 1).
In other applications like Machine Learning, the TDP within GPU and Tensor hardware accelerator processors is also increasing, reaching almost 400W per processor.
Data center energy efficiency is currently not just a corporate problem, but a national issue. The US Department of Energy (DOE) is starting to distribute guidelines for improving data center energy efficiency in the face of rising numbers.
According to the DOE, US based data centers consume 73 billion kWh of electricity, ranked in the top 38 of 218 countries electricity consumption around the world. That equals the total amount of electricity consumed by entire countries such as Chile, Austria, and Belgium.
The power required for the operation of servers in data centers accounts for more than 50% of their total power consumption and is steadily growing!
Expansion of 48V power systems
Many data center companies are converting to 48V systems, implementing an efficient power conversion, and reducing their high-power problems. This trend is rapidly evolving, with others also starting to replace their existing 12V systems. From the server system designer's point of view, as the input voltage changes from 12V to 48V, this requires 100V high capacity MLCCs to support.
Another issue plaguing the modern-day server systems is one of thermal nature. The number of CPU cores is rapidly increasing and accelerators such as high-performance graphic cards are also added, quickly expanding the heat problem.
Starting with Ice Lake, the number of DIMM modules that can be supported per CPU has increased from 12 to 16. As DDR5 now has its own onboard Voltage Regulator (VR), the heat inside the system is rapidly increasing.
The adoption of high-temperature characteristic MLCC’s will be required.
Samsung 1210i, 10uF, 100V, X7S solution (CL32Y106KCVZNWE)
Strategically targeting these customer problems, Samsung Electro-Mechanics has developed a 10uF, 100V, X7S MLCC that supports high temperatures of up to 125 ℃ and guarantees better reliability than existing products for network and corporate equipment such as servers. These products are available for purchase on Arrow.com.
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Available for AI robotics and telecom
Applications that require high power, such as warehouse robotics using AI, may have four 12V batteries connected in series and thusly a 48V system is adopted. 48V power systems are also used in traditional telecom equipment such as base stations, which makes the high-reliability products from Samsung Electro-Mechanics a good fit to use.