Design, Simulation, and Validation Challenges of a Scalable 2000 Amp Core Power Rail

DesignCon 2024 Best Paper Award Winner

August 3, 2024

Steve Sandler, Benjamin Dannan, Heidi Barnes, Idan Ben Ezra, and Yu Ni

Designing a power distribution network (PDN) for a scalable 2000 Amp power supply presents numerous challenges. This paper will address these challenges while demonstrating how to design, simulate, and validate a scalable core power rail with a current of 2000 Amp.

The most common architectures for high-current power rails utilize a 48 VDC input to reduce the current to a more manageable level. This 48 VDC input is then pulse width modulated (PWM) and supplied to multiple parallel unregulated resonant DC-DC converter modules to output the ASIC core supply voltage. Alternatively, the 48 VDC could be stepped down to an intermediate 5 VDC or 12 VDC with multiple parallel unregulated resonant DC-DC converter modules and then go through parallel multi-phase PWM switches to regulate the voltage down to the core voltage. Choosing the appropriate architecture involves various tradeoffs, with the small signal and large signal control loop responses being particularly significant.

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