15 Technical Challenges to Consider and Conquer When Designing a 48V Power Delivery Network

Topics Covered

Producing the highest efficiency at the first conversion stage
Reducing noise near sensitive loads
Providing a tightly regulated 48V bus
Identifying the optimal place for power regulation – upstream or down?
Powering high-current loads

White Paper Overview

The first widespread adoption of 48V system power can be traced back more than 100 years, when the nascent telephone industry recognized the efficiency and transmission distance benefits. More recently, the Open Compute Project has advocated for 48V power delivery within data center racks. Some electric vehicles are now employing 48V system power.

The pace of this generational change from 12V PDNs to 48V PDNs is now accelerating. It’s a question of when rather than if systems will migrate to 48V. The pressure from automotive electrification, the extreme pace of artificial intelligence computing, and the emergence of high-power industrial applications are converging on 48V power delivery networks. While power engineers have decades of experience and confidence with 12V PDNs, questions loom for design teams when migrating to higher capacity 48V PDNs. Discrete systems have been effective with 12V power designs for decades, but when set against evolving power delivery challenges, they can fall short. In many cases ongoing industry innovation – including architectures, topologies and packaging – will ease the implementation of next generation 48V challenges. This innovation will intensify the migration to 48V and help deliver scalable, high-density, future-proofed PDNs.

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