New Power Semiconductors Cut Data Center Energy
Thursday, February 18, 2010 in Energy Efficiency
By Paul Hughes
Power devices - they’ve been around for what seems like forever and the number keeps increasing exponentially. It may surprise you that there are still many valuable developments in power devices, especially when it comes to reducing the amount of power they consume.“
We all know that computers demand an enormous amount of power, but did you know that data centers are one of the biggest users? More than 1% of all the power consumed in the U.S. is used to feed servers. (This is equal to the production of five 1000 MW power plants!) Surprisingly, less than half of the power consumption goes into the computing function in a typical data center. The culprit is power conversion and conditioning, distribution and environmental control.
Fortunately, new developments in high-performance semiconductor components like IGBTs and Super-Junction power MOSFETs for rectification, battery charging and DC/AC inverting can make today’s computers much more energy efficient - and designing in these devices isn’t complicated.
You can learn more in a recent article published in Electronic Products, “New power semiconductors cut data center energy.”
Tags: data center power consumption, environmental control, high-performance IGBTs, power conditioning, power conversion, Power devices, power distribution, Super-Junction power MOSFETs
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