Two-Stage Power Delivery Architecture Using Hybrid Converters for Data Centers and Telecommunication Systems

This paper presents a new power delivery architecture to bring AC distribution voltages to core levels for computing loads using only two conversion stages with new converter topologies to potentially replace the traditional four-stage structure in the development of new data centers. This paper also includes new converters as solutions to the proposed two stages. A new switched capacitor (SC)-based AC-DC converter is proposed for the first stage and demonstrated for an intermediate bus with 90 V–110 VAC to 48–60 VDC conversion and power factor correction. The second stage also includes an SC-based hybrid converter with multi-phase operation suitable for power delivery for core voltages of up to ~1 V with a high current density. This work also reports a new phase sequence for the second stage for an extended output voltage range. Individually, the first stage was measured at 96.1% peak efficiency for output currents ranging from 0 to 4.5 A, while the second stage achieved 90.7% peak efficiency with a load range of 0–220 A at 1V. The measured peak power densities were 73 W/in³ for the first stage and 2020 W/in³ for the second stage. In combination, the direct conversion from ~110 VAC to 1 VDC led to a peak efficiency of 84.1% at 50 A, and this setup has been tested with output currents of up to 160 A, where the efficiency was 73.5%.