New Industry Products

ColdWatt Introduces Power Conversion Platforms for Power Reduction in IT Equipment

February 22, 2007 by Jeff Shepard

ColdWatt Inc. has introduced its digital power conversion portfolio aimed at helping IT managers and systems designers address the increasing challenges of spiraling IT power requirements and rising energy prices. ColdWatt claims that it is one of a few companies delivering efficiency without sacrificing density. The company is currently shipping high efficiency power conversion products intended to enable IT equipment vendors to decrease growing operational expenditures (OPEX) and total cost of ownership by decreasing overall power consumption and increasing server and IT hardware density.

According to the company, over 50% of typical data center power consumption today is used for power delivery, thus operational costs are starting to outstrip the cost of equipment itself. ColdWatt has introduced its first products, the 650W power sub-system and the ac-dc 1U 1200W power supply, to help address these challenges. These flexible digital power conversion platforms allow quick-turn customization and generate 45% less heat, which results in 30% less overall server power consumption helping boost customers’ bottom line.

With its innovative platform approach and flexible technology, ColdWatt provides quick turn-around customization and optimization for customer specific requirements in the computing, networking, storage and telecom markets. Systems designers can realize power conversion efficiencies up to 91%, with emphasis on light load efficiencies greater than 82%, and industry leading densities at these power levels. Innovative system–level features provide enhanced system reliability including fault detection and predictive failure features.

"As networking and computing equipment continues to climb in performance, so does the amount of electricity required and the amount of heat generated, forcing IT managers to look for ways to make their data centers more energy efficient," said Dan Artusi, Chairman and CEO of ColdWatt. "By using Coldwatt’s innovative technologies, we believe systems designers can deliver high performance – yet highly efficient – solutions that reduce operating expenditures for their customers. In addition, our modular digital platforms enable us to rapidly deploy tailor-made solutions and provide superior system-level communications for improved system reliability and performance."

ColdWatt uses proprietary magnetics technology to increase energy storage and digital control to achieve higher efficiency and flexibility. Thus, ColdWatt’s front-end power supplies are able to significantly exceed the 70% efficiency level of commodity power supplies, with power headroom to scale with processing density increases and feature additions. These technology investments are breaking fundamental power electronics barriers and contribute to a scalable 1U roadmap ranging from 650W to >1.2KW.

Coldwatt is currently shipping production quantities of the 650W power supply and sampling the 1200W system.