Low-voltage ICs in power-hungry datacenters benefit from a high-voltage DC supply path

摘要

There's a "back to the future" aspect to power distribution for datacenters in the 21st century. At the beginning of the 20th century, Thomas Edison was a proponent of distributing power to homes and businesses using higher-voltage DC, while Nikola Tesla's backer George Westihghouse supported distribution via AC. That rivalry ended with AC as the preferred method, using transformers (an inefficient but reliable, available passive component) for step-up/down conversion.