Texas Instruments (TI) announced on May 23 local time that it is collaborating with NVIDIA to develop power management and sensing technologies for 800V high-voltage direct current (HVDC) power distribution systems for data center servers.

With the development of AI, it is expected that the power required for each data center rack will increase from 100kW today to over 1MW. To power the 1MW rack, the existing 48V distribution system will require nearly 450 pounds of copper, which is physically impossible to support the computing requirements in the long term.

The new 800V high-voltage direct current distribution architecture will provide the power density and conversion efficiency required by future AI processors, while minimizing the growth in power supply size, weight and complexity. This 800V architecture will enable engineers to expand energy-efficient racks as the demands of data centers evolve.