Navitas Semiconductor (NASDAQ: NVTS) expands into higher-power markets with its new Design Center at China’s Hangzhou. The center will help bring next-generation GaN Power ICs and associated high-efficiency, high-power-density systems to enable data centers around the world to upgrade from silicon to GaN. This will help improve energy savings significantly, reducing electricity costs and cutting CO2 emissions.
Hangzhou’s new design center hosts a highly experienced team of world-class power system designers with comprehensive capabilities across electrical, thermal and mechanical design, software development, and complete simulation and prototyping capabilities. The new team will support global data center power customers, right from concepts to prototype through to full qualification and mass production.
The Design Center will develop schematics, layouts, and firmware for full-function, producible data center power supplies. Innovative solutions for the highest power density and highest efficiency will bring the value of GaN into mainstream data centers. Additionally, multiple partnerships will be created for magnetics, thermal substrates, and other materials to assist customers to optimize their power supply designs.
As per Navitas, upgrading from legacy silicon to new GaN could help save energy up to 40% and cost by $1.9 billion per year in data center electricity costs, globally. Data center supplies are rated to meet tough efficiency criteria, with the extreme ‘Titanium’ grade demanding 96% efficiency at 50% load. These new benchmarks are not only enabled by GaN technology but also demanded by legislation such as the European Union’s ‘Directive 2009/125/EC, 2019 Annex’ which states that data new center power supplies must meet ‘Titanium’ level of efficiency from January 1st, 2023.
“The Navitas Data Center team has the new technical skills of GaN power ICs plus the experience of real power supply design and qualification,” said Charles ZHA, VP and GM of Navitas China. “The first proof point is a 1.2kW ‘Titanium plus’ design that not only exceeds the highest efficiency standards for data center power supplies but is also value-engineered to be lower cost than legacy silicon designs. After this, it’s on to 2.2kW and 3kW platforms.”
The 1.2kW design was developed in collaboration with Boco and FRD of Hangzhou, and the power supply is now under evaluation for mass production in 2022. Golden YIN, Boco’s CEO said “GaNFast power ICs are easy-to-use, digital-in, power-out building blocks that have accelerated time-to-prototype and first-time-right designs.” Ray GU, GM of Power Supply BU at FRD stated “GaNFast power ICs are essential to achieving Titanium Plus efficiency, a critical milestone for next-generation datacenter power supplies. This will help FRD strengthen its product portfolio and provide comprehensive solutions to enterprise customers”.
“As data and communications continue their exponential growth, it is critical for data centers to upgrade to GaNFast power ICs to reduce costs, maximize energy savings and reduce CO2 emissions,” said Gene SHERIDAN, co-founder and CEO. “As a critical expansion market, we recruited ahead of our recent IPO funding, and that faith in our data center design team is already paying dividends. By working in collaboration with data center engineers around the world, we can accelerate adoption of GaN-based data centers and make a significant impact on energy savings, electricity costs and CO2 emissions.”
