Transmitting Overpower Alert Signals With Low Latency Boosts Reliability Of Bus-Bar Power Lines

Focus:

For server racks with dc bus-bar power distribution, reductions in power supply size and cost can be achieved when using multiple, redundant power supplies. But to enable this approach, when operating in a failure/nonredundant mode, these smaller power supplies must be able to detect an excessive power condition and then generate a fast interrupt in the form of an overpower alert that signals to the servers to throttle back until the redundancy gets restored and/or power comes back into an acceptable range. This article presents a study of the conditions necessary for reliable transmission of overpower alert signals across a dc bus-bar power delivery network (PDN) in a high-power server rack. It also introduces a simple technique for broadcasting the alert logic signal across such PDNs with a small transmitter/receiver and with minimal latency in node throttling. A proof-of-concept test setup and experimental results are presented.

What you’ll learn:

• How to perform fast power throttling in server racks by reliably transmitting overpower alert signals across a dc bus-bar power delivery network
• How to achieve low latency when broadcasting overpower alert signals across a dc bus-bar power delivery network

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Author & Publication:

Viktor Vogman, Power Conversion Consulting, Olympia, Wash., How2Power Today, Feb 14 2020

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