Pietro Scalia
Sr.Director Power System Marketing and Architecture
Renesas
Pietro Scalia is the Head of Power System Architecture and Marketing at Renesas Electronics, which he joined two years ago. To support Power growth through a system approach, demonstrating how Renesas components solve application challenges for customers, his team has a key role to identify the hottest architectures that drive power across all the market segments, and building hardware to demonstrate the performance of Renesas solutions. The team is spread in three regions, defining and supporting combo power solutions for all the market applications. At onsemi (2021-2023) he lead the Munich Application and PLM team of Automotive EV-Traction Solutions, to define and develop SiC and Si Power Module and Bare DIE portfolio. Previously he worked 11 years at TI, with worldwide Business Development responsibilities on Power products with application focus swinging from Automotive market sector to Telecommunications and Cloud, leveraging his earlier career in Siemens, Ericsson, ST Microelectronics and Academia.
Presentations
Renesas System Solutions from Grid to Core in AI-Datacenter
AI explosive growth and its consequent hardware evolution have brought a dramatic increase in power levels of the IT rack in datacenters, up to several hundred kW already today. This factor is obliging to evolve the conventional architecture of power distribution inside the rack, based on the OCP standard 48 V architecture. Higher voltage for the distribution inside the rack is required and 800V (2 or 3 wires) is going to be selected, to be able to reduce the distribution losses and the required copper. As a fundamental element of the new architecture, a high power dense isolated 16:1 DC/DC converts 800V down to 48V now, to quickly reuse most of the available ecosystem. As a technology enabler, mid-voltage GaN plays a relevant role on the primary side, enabling the increase of switching frequency while granting efficiency performance. The LLC Direct Current Transformer (DCX) topology, operating open-loop at constant fs can provide tightly unregulated 48V output with an efficiency of 98%. In this paper a detailed analysis of that converter will be described together with the key components enabling performance in control, drive and active switches. Another area where GaN will play an enabling role for the architecture is the newly defined End Equipment of Sidecar Rack, where the 3-Phase AC to high voltage DC conversion is implemented. Mid voltage Bidirectional GaN will realize topology simplification in front-end rectification. Evolution of the architecture will continue across the next generations of xPUs in line with higher power requirements.
The Value of GaN BDS in Next-Generation Power Electronics
We will describe how Renesas GaN offering supports the requirements of different power applications, across sectors such as AI Infrastructure, Solar Energy, OBC and DC/DC in Electric vehicles. The power conversion within each of these sectors is shifting towards more power dense, efficient, modular, and intelligent power architectures, with trends toward high-voltage buses, bidirectional energy flow, and fewer conversion stages. There are many inherent benefits to the technology in terms of manufacturability in standard silicon fabs, and thus its scalability, also, in its high power density due to high switching frequencies with efficiency enabled by key material properties, and massive system integration through embedded features such as bidirectionality (novel to GaN) and where applicable control, protection, sense, drive, and more. GaN at high voltage covers dramatic advantages and enabling factors in these new topologies and architectures, both with unidirectional and bidirectional switches. We will provide specific examples in infrastructure and renewable energy, with detailed results of power architecture and solutions built to demonstrate the value of GaN in these applications. We will show how Renesas GaN can solve main challenges, like controlling switching times, protecting the device from events like overvoltage and short circuit, in critical customer systems. GaN at low voltage is coming to offer the density improvement vs silicon at comparable of eventually better cost structure, as soon as the supply chain will be comparably in place with standing silicon. Supply chain of a new technology is always key to enabling its large volume spread in the market, on top of all the system advantages. It will be described how is Renesas going to support the transition to a significant volume increase that market is requiring.