Our PI Simulation Service & Experience:

Taiwan has become a global center for AI technology, with many tech giants planning to establish hyperscale data centers in Taiwan. The future looks promising, but the national power consumption in Taiwan is undeniably a significant issue.
A substantial portion of the power loss in data centers comes from their internal power management systems, including Power Delivery Network (PDN) design. If the PDN design is not sufficiently optimized or has flaws, these losses can accumulate into significant power wastage. Especially in large data centers, where such power losses can seriously impact overall operational costs and power consumption.
In severe cases, it could even lead to overheating and damage, even cause public safety concerns. Moreover, the higher the power density of the equipment within the data center, the greater the challenges in PDN design. Controlling impedance and reducing losses in the power layers are key to minimizing power consumption.
The increase in power consumption also generates more heat, necessitating more complex cooling solutions. These cooling systems further increase the overall power usage of the data center. Therefore, during the development process, optimizing PDN design with professional simulation tools has become an essential phase for many customers.

PI-DC Analysis (also called IR-drop analysis)

PI-DC analysis computes the IR drop (voltage drop), current density, and power loss density in the power supply nets. Using this analysis, it can identify how much current is consumed by IC, connector pins or stitching vias at DC operating conditions. If the power plane has too big voltage drop, the power supply voltage at the IC might fall below the allowed minimum voltage to cause abnormal work.

• Voltage drop (find hot-spot location)
• Current density (find copper areas and stitching via with excessive current)
• DC resistance (measure power plane resistance for critical layout location)
• Power loss (measure power dissipation on the power and ground nets)
• Temperature dependent option (consider electrical-thermal co-analysis)

PI-AC analysis (also called decoupling capacitor optimize analysis)

PI-AC analysis computes the impedance for the IC power planes over a certain frequency range. It can identify whether the PDN provides a low impedance path from the VRM to the IC power pin. Excessive impedance can generate huge power noise, and will pass through the system PDN to power plane when core has input-output switching to let IC fail to work.

• PDN impedance (measure how much power plane noise ripple)
• Decoupling capacitor optimization (find cost-effective capacitor combination)
• PDN transfer impedance (measure how much power noise coupling between two power plane)
• Power plane resonance analysis (find resonance location that have the potential high field strength)
• Capacitor loop inductance (qualify whether the capacitor is placed effectively)