TI Breaks Down High-Voltage DC Power in Data Centers

With AI workloads pushing traditional power architectures to their limits, NVIDIA — as the leading AI chip supplier — has emerged as a sort of influencer in the power electronics market. The company is pushing new approaches such as disaggregated power models to keep up with the surging power-per-rack demands in data centers, which are well over 100 kW and heading for more than 500 kW. This approach relocates AC-DC conversion out of the main compute racks and into dedicated “sidecar” power systems.

NVIDIA is also backing the broader shift to 800-V high-voltage DC (HVDC) power distribution along with AI data center giants such as Google, Microsoft, and Meta. By distributing power to server racks at higher voltage, wiring requirements are significantly reduced, reclaiming rack space for more GPUs.

The high voltages also help improve end-to-end power efficiency by up to 5%. While it remains in the relatively early stages of development, 800 V DC is also seen as opening the door to megawatt-scale rack designs.

At APEC 2026, Electronic Design spoke with Kannan Soundarapandian, VP and GM of high-voltage power at Texas Instruments, who outlined the company's role in the transition to HVDC power architectures (see video above).

He highlighted TI's NVIDIA-aligned portfolio of 800-V DC reference designs. They cover everything from 800-V hot-swap controllers for input power protection to compact DC-DC converters. The latter step power efficiently down to the core levels of the GPU in two steps instead of the traditional three.

A compact 800-V to 6-V isolated bus converter is followed by a 6-V to <1-V multiphase buck solution with high current density. TI's newly released IsoShield isolated-bias technology is among the innovations playing into these solutions.

In the video, Soundarapandian also reflected on the extent of NVIDIA’s influence on the future direction of power design. He also offered his perspective on how the rapid growth in data centers is accelerating innovation for technologies such as gallium nitride (GaN) and whether this is causing power electronics vendors to reassess their investment plans.