Infineon and NVIDIA collaborate on GaN-based power conversion
Infineon is advancing its collaboration with NVIDIA on 800 Volt direct current (VDC) power architectures for AI data centres.
This builds on the companies' joint work first announced in May 2025 and detailed further in October 2025, which centred on serviceable, hot-swappable 800 VDC server racks.
Timed with NVIDIA's GTC Berlin developer conference, the announcement centres on the high-voltage intermediate bus converter (IBC), one of the most critical and demanding conversion stages in the power delivery chain of AI data centres.
“AI is fundamentally reshaping the demands we place on power infrastructure, and semiconductors are at the heart of solving that challenge,” said Jochen Hanebeck, CEO, Infineon Technologies AG. “Our collaboration with NVIDIA on 800 Volt power architectures shows what is possible when deep semiconductor expertise meets the pace of innovation required by AI.”
Driven by the extreme power draw of AI workloads, data centres have adopted intermediate-bus architectures in which an IBC steps down the main bus voltage feeding accelerator cards into a lower-voltage rail, allowing downstream stages to efficiently generate the tight core and point-of-load rails that AI processors require.
This multi-stage approach reduces distribution losses, all while meeting strict constraints on board area, thermal limits and uptime. As AI infrastructure scales, 800 VDC is being introduced alongside existing AC and lower-voltage DC architectures as an additional distribution option for higher-density compute.
Compared to silicon, GaN allows power devices to switch significantly faster with lower losses, which enables higher switching frequencies of up to 1 MHz at the IBC stage. This in turn allows the size of magnetic components and passives to shrink considerably, directly translating into higher power density and lower board heights, a critical advantage as rack space becomes an increasingly scarce resource in AI data centres.
At the same time, GaN's low conduction and switching losses support best-in-class conversion efficiency, helping to limit heat generation even as power levels per rack continue to climb toward the megawatt range. Infineon says that these characteristics make GaN the preferred semiconductor technology today capable of meeting the combined demands of power density, efficiency, and fast transient response at the IBC stage.
Infineon and NVIDIA collaborate along the entire data centre power chain. In addition to IBCs, this also includes power path protection solutions, as announced in October 2025, targeting safety and service aspects such as the hot-swap controller functionality and enabling future server boards to operate in 800 VDC power architectures.
