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The Modular Datacenter Stack Technical Companion
Skid architectures, BESS integration, MV switchgear, busway and rack topologies for the modular hyperscale datacenter build.
Essay
Essay
The Modular Datacenter Stack: How the Building Gets Built (When There Aren't Enough Electricians)
How the AI datacenter building gets built: modular skids, BESS, UPS, busway, rack enclosures. Where PE has deployed and where returns compress.
Essay
The On-Package Delivery Stack — Technical Companion
IVR magnetics, thin-film substrates, high-density capacitors and the qualification-gated architecture of on-package power delivery.
Essay
The On-Package Delivery Stack: How 48V Becomes 0.8V at 2,250 Amperes
How 48V becomes 0.8V at the chip die: multi-phase POL, IVR, on-package power delivery, and why the foundries hold the strategic value pool.
Essay
The Interconnect Stack: Technical Companion
Where the market essay named the vendors and quantified the lead times, this piece explains the physics. Why voltage steps up, how a 400-tonne transformer moves 300 MW at 99% efficiency, why SF6 became standard and why it is being phased out.
Essay
The Interconnect Stack: Transformers, Switchgear and the Grid Equipment That Gates the AI Buildout
Grid interconnect is now the binding constraint on AI. Large power transformer lead times have doubled since 2023. Hyperscalers are building their own generation to escape 4-7 year utility queues. A layer-by-layer analysis from grain-oriented electrical steel to grid queue reform.
Essay
The Capacitor Stack: Technical Companion
Where the market essay named the vendors, this piece explains the physics. What a farad actually is, why HSCs beat batteries on 10-second pulses, why MLCCs derate under DC bias, and why a fifty-cent film cap decides whether an 800VDC rack survives its own noise.
Essay
The Thermal Stack: Technical Companion
Where the market essay named the vendors, this piece explains the physics. What 1,000 W/cm2 at the die actually means, how a hundred-dollar coupling either saves or destroys a rack, and where cooling is going next.
Essay
The Wide-Bandgap Stack: Technical Companion
Where the market essay named the players, this piece explains the physics. What wide bandgap actually means, why SiC and GaN outperform silicon at the same voltage, and how a boule of vapour-grown crystal becomes a switch that runs at 800V and 200kHz. Cross-sections, process flows, roadmaps.
Essay
The Thermal Stack: How Heat Became the Binding Constraint on AI Compute
Every watt delivered to a GPU comes back out as heat, and at 600kW per rack there is nowhere for it to go but water. A layer-by-layer analysis from the die to the dry cooler: the $9.5bn acquisitions, the coupling oligopoly, the fluid chemistry stranded by a single corporate decision.
Essay
The Wide-Bandgap Stack: Boom, Bust, and the Rebuild of AI's Power Semiconductor Chain
SiC and GaN are the enabling materials of the 800VDC data center. Their industry has just come through a capacity glut, a 60%+ price collapse, and the bankruptcy of its founding champion. A layer-by-layer analysis from crystal boule to gate driver.
Essay
The Capacitor Stack: How Energy Storage Became Core Compute Infrastructure
The 800VDC transition has quietly turned four sleepy component categories — HSCs, EDLCs, MLCCs, and silicon capacitors — into some of the most supply-constrained, contested layers of the AI buildout. A layer-by-layer analysis.