Powering AI

    Current
    Molded Power Inductors

    Click image to enlarge

    Figure 1: Typical components on SMCs

    In DC/DC converters with higher switching frequencies, compact molded inductors enable smaller designs but often must cope with higher voltages and are exposed to higher temperatures. Both effects can lead to an increase in magnetic core loss over time due to material degradation related to the percolation phenome
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    Date:
    05/29/2026
    STMicroelectronics' new GaN Semiconductors Improve Energy Efficiency for High-Demand Applications from AI Servers to Robotics

    STMicroelectronics' new GaN Semiconductors Improve Energy Efficiency for High-Demand Applications from AI Servers to Robotics

    ­New gallium nitride (GaN)-based power semiconductors from STMicroelectronics are designed to improve efficiency and increase power density in high-demand applications that support electrification. The 700V PowerGaN devices in the STPOWER portfolio address challenges such as rising AI server power consumption an
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    Date:
    05/26/2026
    Microchip Launches 3.3 kV HV‑D3 mSiC Power Modules to Enable Solid-State Transformers for AI Data Centers

    Microchip Launches 3.3 kV HV‑D3 mSiC Power Modules to Enable Solid-State Transformers for AI Data Centers

    ­Microchip Technology announces the availability of its new 3.3 kV HV‑D3 mSiC® Power Modules, designed to simplify and accelerate the adoption of solid-state transformers (SSTs) in AI hyperscale data centers and other high‑voltage power applications. The new modules integrate 3.3 kV silicon carbide (S
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    Date:
    05/26/2026
    SandboxAQ Integrates its Quantitative AI Models with Anthropic's Claude via MCP

    Partha P. Mukherjee, Ph.D., Professor & University Faculty Scholar, School of Mechanical Engineering, and Director, Center for Advances in Resilient Energy Storage (CARES), Purdue University

    SandboxAQ today announced the integration of its Large Quantitative Models (LQMs) with Claude, Anthropic's frontier AI model, making it possible to directly connect a large language model to a large quantitative model for drug discovery and materials science. Trained on real-world lab data and scientific equations, LQM
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    Date:
    05/18/2026
    PSDcast – Nuclear Energy for AI Data Centers

    Derek Matthews, Chief Strategy Officer and Electrical Architect for BaRupOn

    ­As AI explodes in popularity, the power demands for the data centers that train and power the AI is also growing at an exponential pace. At present, global power usage by data centers is around 55 gigawatts, and by 2030, AI could consume 35-50% of total data center power. That’s spurred federal and state
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    Date:
    05/12/2026
    Infineon Collaborates with d-Matrix to Optimize Performance and Power Efficiency for Interactive AI Inferencing

    Infineon Collaborates with d-Matrix to Optimize Performance and Power Efficiency for Interactive AI Inferencing

    ­Infineon Technologies AG announced a collaboration with d-Matrix®, a pioneer in highly interactive, low-latency AI inference compute for data centers. Infineon’s power solutions help d-Matrix’s Corsair™ inference accelerator achieve industry-leading performance, energy efficiency, and system integration in
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    Date:
    05/12/2026
    Renesas Completes Acquisition of Irida Labs to Expand Vision AI Software Capabilities

    Gaurang Shah, Vice President and General Manager, Embedded Processing Product Group

    ­Renesas Electronics Corporation, a premier supplier of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced that a subsidiary of Renesas has completed the acquisition of Irida Labs, a Greece-based company specializing in embedded software for AI-powered visual perception systems. The ac
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    Date:
    05/08/2026
    Construction's CIOs Sound the Alarm on Data Ownership and AI Readiness

    Marc Schütz, Chief Product Officer at Revizto

    ­New research from Revizto, the leading collaboration platform for the Architecture, Engineering, Construction & Operations (AECO) sector, reveals that 96% of CIOs report concern about data ownership and control across their tech stacks.  The debate is no longer primarily about cost or which tools
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    Date:
    05/07/2026
    Optimizing the 800 V to 48 V/50 V Power Path for AI Data Center Servers

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    Figure 1: Evolution of data center power architecture: (a) today: AC distribution, integrated IT racks; (b,c) next-gen systems: AC distribution, disaggregated IT racks with 50 V servers (b) or 800 V servers (c); (d) future systems: data center-wide HVDC, 800 V servers

    The rapid growth of AI and accelerated computing is fundamentally reshaping power‑delivery requirements inside modern data centers. As GPU clusters scale towards and beyond 1 MW/rack, traditional 48 V rack‑level distribution is reaching its practical limits due to high currents, thermal stress, and increasing cop
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    Date:
    05/04/2026
    SiTime Boosts GPU Utilization in AI Data Centers with Elite 2 Super-TCXO

    SiTime Boosts GPU Utilization in AI Data Centers with Elite 2 Super-TCXO

    ­SiTime Corporation, the Precision Timing company, announced the Elite 2 Super-TCXO® to increase GPU utilization and compute efficiency in AI data centers by delivering better time synchronization. The product targets a $1.5 billion cumulative market by 2030. “Industry reports show GPU utilizati
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    Date:
    05/04/2026
    The Highs and Lows of APEC 2026

    Jason Lomberg, North American Editor, PSD

    ­Welcome to the May issue! April’s issue dealt with the immediate aftermath of APEC, and this month I’d like to get into some specifics. Amongst a plethora of new developments, two specific themes stood out – the decline of EVs and the ascension of artificial intelligence. Most companies and OEMs stil
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    Date:
    05/01/2026
    Ensuring Data Centre Readiness

    Ally Winning, European Editor, PSD

    ­Welcome to the May edition of Power Systems Design Europe. Even before the AI boom, the roll out of data centres were happening extremely quickly. Data centres enable some of the most essential services we use today, for example hosting web sites, and running IoT applications. That importance will only grow in
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    Date:
    05/01/2026
    Why Higher Rack Density is Changing Interconnect Designs

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    Figure 1: An example using the Saf-D-Grid Max connector demonstrates that, at constant ambient temperature, connector temperature increases as applied current increases

    AI acceleration and high-performance computing (HPC) architectures are fueling an unprecedented rise in data center demand. Goldman Sachs expects global data center power demand to surge +160% by 2030, and AI server racks in 2027 will require 50x more power than cloud equivalents five years ago. To meet this
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    Date:
    05/01/2026
    Energy Harvesting Enables Low-Power IoT

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    ­Energy harvesting is not a new concept in electrical engineering. The most successful foray into energy harvesting is solar power, which over the decades has been scaled up to economically generate electricity for utility companies and scaled down to power drones, battery chargers, and garden lights.  To
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    Date:
    05/01/2026
    Powering the AI Revolution: Navigating the Gridlock and the Future of Onsite Generation

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    Figure 1: AI scaling laws show that larger models trained with exponentially more compute consistently achieve better performance

    ­The rapid growth of AI is driven by compute deployment at an unprecedented pace. AI scaling laws show that larger models trained with exponentially more compute consistently achieve better performance. For leading technology companies, the implication is clear: the most effective way to improve AI systems is
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    Date:
    05/01/2026
    Hardware and Software Understanding Delivers High-Performance Embedded AI

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    Figure 1: TRIA SM2S-QCS6490 - Compute Module by Tria

    ­Developers and users of the embedded systems that control industrial and other real-time processes can use the cloud to embrace AI capabilities. But there is a growing need for local AI processing to overcome problems associated with the need for a persistent and unbroken connection to the cloud servers. Numerous se
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    Date:
    05/01/2026
    Generative Physics: Why AI's Next Breakthrough Will Be Engineered, Not Generated

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    Figure 1: Raspberry Pi Pico Thermal Demo in GPStudio

    ­The artificial intelligence revolution has, until now, been overwhelmingly digital. Large language models write code and compose text. Image generators produce photorealistic art on command. Recommendation engines decide what billions of people watch, read, and buy. These are remarkable achievements, but they sh
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    Date:
    05/01/2026
    Smarter Together: How Agentic AI and Cobots Are Transforming Industrial Operations

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    Figure 1: The Knowledge Ingestion Pipeline: How LLMs and VLMs absorb expertise from human video demonstrations and technical documents to generate robot task policies

    ­Agentic AI provides the “brain” for autonomous decision-making, while cobots provide the physical presence—with the sensors, force limitations, and safety-by-design required to work alongside humans in complex operational environments. Together, they form a more capable system than either technology al
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    Date:
    05/01/2026
    Protection and Telemetry in AI with 800V Hot Swap

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    Figure 1: 48V data centre power delivery to rack

    ­As AI workloads intensify, GPUs in server environments are driving unprecedented power demands - prompting a shift toward an 800V power delivery architecture at the rack level. This elevated voltage introduces new challenges for system protection and monitoring, particularly during live tray insertion and re
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    Date:
    05/01/2026
    Powering Data Centers Sustainably in an AI World

    Kevin Parmenter, Pins Out Engineering, for TSC America, Inc.

    ­Artificial intelligence (AI) workloads are driving rapid growth in data center power density and energy consumption. Hyperscale and edge facilities supporting AI training and inference are increasingly constrained by power availability and thermal limits. As deployment accelerates, sustainable power delivery ha
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    Date:
    05/01/2026
    AI and the Dark Web

    Jason Lomberg, North American Editor, PSD

    ­A new report suggests that a significant portion of web traffic is courtesy of AI, and in the future, a majority of online activity could be artificial in nature. But this only hints at the larger (and potentially catastrophic) problem – using AI to scrape and harness the dark web. According to TollBit,
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    Date:
    05/01/2026
    Archive

    Power Systems Design

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    Power Systems Design

    Power Systems Design is a leading global media platform serving the power electronics design engineering community. It delivers in-depth technical content, industry news, and product insights to engineers and decision-makers developing advanced power systems and technologies.

    Published 12× per year across North America and Europe, Power Systems Design is distributed through online and fully digital editions, complemented by eNewsletters, webinars, and multimedia content. The platform covers key areas including power conversion, semiconductors, renewable energy, automotive electrification, AI power systems, and industrial applications—supporting innovation across the global electronics industry.