ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
cabling weight and I2
R losses, improving
overall EV efficiency. The move to 800V has been underpinned by improvements and commercialisation of wide bandgap (WBG) semiconductors, SiC in particular. At 800V, the efficiency improvements of SiC upon incumbent Si IGBT and Si MOSFET technology are significant and outweigh the cost premium of silicon carbide power semiconductors. With electric vehicles occupying the majority revenue share of the power electronics market, power electronics innovation revolved around EVs and the e-powertrain, for both SiC and GaN technology. This has led to considerable commercialisation and cost reduction for both wide bandgap materials, as well as demonstration of their long-term reliability in harsh environments and their material superiority to silicon for high-voltage applications. GaN innovations have been significant due to hype around its potential future adoption into EVs. However, GaN uptake into EVs has been slow, with the material more suited to low-voltage, high- frequency applications.
Wide bandgap and HVDC innovations future-proof data centres for next-generation AI training and inference
Thanks to technological innovations and commercialisation across the wide bandgap semiconductor market, largely driven by electric vehicles, the adoption of wide bandgap technology into data centre power
electronics has been accelerated. Reference designs for 8kW and 12kW power supply units (PSUs) across leading power electronics players, such as Infineon and Navitas, feature SiC for high-voltage conversion stages and power factor correction (PFC), and GaN for low-voltage conversion stages. With lower voltage conversion and the possibility for much faster (up to MHz) switching, the material benefits of GaN in data centres are highly desirable; GaN will likely enjoy faster uptake in data centres
“
While IDTechEx still forecasts long-term growth in the EV market, many players are looking for alternative, growing application areas for power electronics.
800V architecture, and development of the necessary safety evaluation and processes which can be modified from EV to data centre, HVDC data centre architecture development can be accelerated by taking notes from existing EV power architectures. The transition to 800VDC is expected to simplify and future-proof data centre architectures. With fewer power conversion stages and lower I2
R losses, data centre
than in electric vehicles. Switching to WBG semiconductors in data centres leads to efficiency gains, but importantly also leads to significant increases in power density, with smaller SiC and GaN devices, and reduction in the size of passive components, such as capacitors and inductors.
”
In the same way that WBG semiconductors enabled the 800V shift in EV architecture, they will also facilitate the transition to 800VDC/ HVDC AI data centres. With a precedent of
JULY/AUGUST 2026 | ELECTRONICS FOR ENGINEERS 25
efficiency will increase. Fewer points of failure reduce the chances of downtime. Most importantly, 800VDC data centre architecture enables much higher power levels to be delivered to server racks, supporting future GPU generations and AI training models. The inter-relatedness of power electronics applications complicates the market. Innovations in one application can directly influence large-scale changes in another. In “Power Electronics Market 2026-2036: Data Centers, Electric Vehicles, and Renewables”, cross-industry innovations in materials, manufacture and device architecture are considered, and clarity is provided on the power electronics industry as a whole. For more information on this report, including downloadable sample pages, please visit
www.IDTechEx.com/PowerElec, or for the full portfolio of related research available from IDTechEx, see
www.IDTechEx.com.
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