The explosion of Gen AI has made computing capacity a central resource to the next decade. And has turned attention towards the energy needed to provide this capacity. In 2023, data centers consumed the energy equivalent of 40 million US homes. The expectation is that this number will triple by 2030.
At the heart of any data center’s energy equation lie three key factors: power conversion, thermal management, and cooling. Power conversion refers to the process of transforming electrical power from the grid into a form usable by the data center’s equipment. Thermal management involves dissipating heat generated by this equipment. And cooling ensures that the data center maintains an optimal operating temperature. These processes are essential for reducing energy waste.
“There are opportunities to use new materials for higher power conversion,” says Cynthia Liao. Cynthia is part Vertical Horizons, an team of PhD researchers and venture builders at MIT exploring how novel gallium nitride device structures can outperform silicon based devices in data centers. “At a higher voltage you start to see silicon based converters degrading in efficiency. We began asking: what is the material that can convert power much more efficiently than silicon?”
Their approach focuses on achieving marginal efficiency gains at various points along the data center’s energy chain, including power supply, backup batteries, power distribution units, and server power generation. By minimizing power loss and heat generation at each stage, they aim to reduce the overall energy consumption and cooling requirements of data centers.