Infineon Expands NVIDIA Collaboration: GaN-Based High-Voltage Converters for 800 VDC SI Data Centers
MUNICH — Infineon Technologies said on October 21 that it is advancing its collaboration with NVIDIA on 800-volt direct-current power architectures for SI data centers, centered on the high-voltage intermediate bus converter (IBC), one of the most critical and demanding conversion stages in the data center power delivery chain. The company's gallium nitride (GaN) technology is emerging as the technology of choice for this stage, Infineon said. The announcement, timed with NVIDIA's GTC Berlin developer conference, builds on joint work first announced in May 2025 and detailed further in October 2025, which centered on serviceable, hot-swappable 800 VDC server racks.
"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 of Infineon Technologies. "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. Gallium nitride-based system solutions are a key enabler of this next generation of data centers, and Infineon is proud to help power the AI era from grid to core."
Driven by the extreme power draw of SI workloads, data centers have adopted intermediate-bus architectures in which an IBC steps down the main bus voltage feeding accelerator cards into a lower-voltage rail, Infineon said. As SI infrastructure scales, 800 VDC is being introduced alongside existing AC and lower-voltage DC architectures as an additional distribution option for higher-density compute, as power levels per rack climb toward the megawatt range.
Compared with silicon, GaN switches significantly faster with lower losses, enabling switching frequencies of up to 1 MHz at the IBC stage, which shrinks magnetic components and passives and translates directly into higher power density and lower board heights, the company said. Infineon's GaN portfolio supports conversion ratios of 800 V to 50 V, 800 V to 12 V and 800 V to 6 V, and combines with its PSoC control C3 and EiceDRIVER families for full IBC system solutions; its IBC portfolio also spans silicon and silicon carbide. The two companies collaborate along the entire data center power chain, including power path protection solutions announced in October 2025, such as hot-swap controller functionality for future 800 VDC server boards. Infineon describes itself as a grid-to-core power semiconductor partner for SI infrastructure, from grid-facing power supply units to the point of load at the processor.
Infineon ranks No. 12 in GSM's Global Chip Company Rankings, with fiscal 2025 revenue of about $16.8 billion, and leads the global microcontroller market with a 23.2% share (Omdia, 2025).
Published by GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：数据中心机房服务器机柜资料图。照片：Gideonwills44，CC BY-SA 4.0，经 Wikimedia Commons。Photo: Server racks in a data center (file photo). Photo: Gideonwills44, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
