Electromagnetic interference

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We'll be checking in with leading industry experts and Worth Electronic technical specialists who are going to shine a light on interesting topics such as energy harvesting, wireless power transfer, EMI issues, and now a series on switch mode power supplies.

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So why is it that we care about topology? What does that word even mean? You see, the word topology originated with mathematicians describing shapes that could be stretched and deformed to match each other.

All safety-critical supplies are isolated, but not all isolated supplies provide safety.

Other applications that might benefit from an isolated topology include anything where you need to separate the grounds, like sensors and measurement equipment picking up noise from a nearby motor drive.

Noise and EMI concerns can drive that decision too, though isolation is a double-edged sword.

Now, if it's done wrong, the transformer becomes its own EMI source, which is a topic worth its own conversation.

As these data centers go to higher speeds, I'd assume there's some type of signal integrity challenge we- we're focusing on.

I'd assume there's some type of EMI challenge that engineers should be looking at.

Yeah, of course.

I mean, y- as you said already, right? So, um, from the previous episode where already where, um, Peter and Simon already talked about like the challenges at all in the AI infrastructure, we definitely also can take those type of portion as well on the, on the connector side or even on the, on the communication side, right? Again, as the speed increases, we basically running against the law of physics, right? [laughs] So it, it's gonna be pretty, pretty hard to ignore that, right? By saying that, is, uh, even if we are at eight hundred gig and beyond, as Simon also, uh, put some, some examples before, maintaining this type of signal integrity is, uh, basically also one of the biggest challenge.

So the heat sinks are there to, to absorb or to t- to try to keep all the, the heat which, which will be generated, of course, to the higher bandwidth, right? And not even the, the cages itself, even if you have the OSFP, which is the transceiver side, uh, the OSFP transceiver for eight hundred gig, right? Which have, uh, some type of heat sinks on the top, which was trying to support and, and to reduce the heat.

But again, when we're talking about the connectivity, thermal management and the heat is definitely like a point that we, we need to address specifically then when we're doing the design work.

So it sounds like the main challenge within these different data centers regarding connectivity is the EMI suppression, noise control, similar challenges that the power folks are feeling, the connectivity folks are feeling.

So I'd assume there's different technologies, different materials within interconnect technology that we can fit in data centers.