Engineers at UC San Diego have created a new chip design that could help data centers use less energy. The chip improves a key process called voltage conversion. A dc-dc step-down converter is a common circuit part that changes high voltage electricity from a power source into the much lower voltage needed by computer chips, such as graphics processing units, or gpus, which handle complex calculations.
Traditional converters often use magnetic parts called inductors. These parts work well but are reaching their limits in size and efficiency as computing power grows. The new design instead uses a piezoelectric resonator. A piezoelectric resonator is a small device that stores and moves energy by vibrating mechanically, similar to how a tuning fork works. This approach can make converters smaller and more energy-dense.
Hybrid circuit improves performance
The engineers combined the piezoelectric resonator with small standard capacitors arranged in a special way. Capacitors are simple electronic parts that store electric charge. The hybrid setup creates several paths for electricity to flow and reduces wasted energy inside the resonator. In laboratory tests, a prototype chip converted 48 volts down to 4.8 volts - a common requirement in data centers - with a peak efficiency of 96.2 percent. It also supplied about four times more current than earlier piezoelectric designs. Current is the flow of electric charge.
The advance offers a path toward smaller and more efficient power systems for future computing. However, the technology remains early-stage. Piezoelectric resonators vibrate, so they need new methods for attaching them to circuit boards instead of standard soldering. Further improvements in materials, circuit layout, and packaging will be necessary before widespread use.
Overall, the work points to a promising alternative for managing power in energy-hungry data centers without relying solely on older magnetic components.
The engineers have described the methods and results of this study in a paper published in Nature Communications.