Analog Devices is reported to be in advanced talks to acquire Empower Semiconductor, a closely held California power-management chip company, for $1.5bn in cash. The deal could be announced as soon as Tuesday, and neither company has confirmed the discussions publicly. Empower designs integrated voltage regulators for AI data-center builds, placing regulators directly under GPUs or other accelerators. The regulators deliver more than 3,000 amps of current through the PCB rather than across it. Empower’s Crescendo platform is cited as an example of vertical power delivery, which targets higher rack-level power densities. The approach can reduce total system power by about 20% by eliminating resistive losses from lateral routing. For large-scale hyperscalers, the resulting savings make the voltage-regulator IP strategically valuable.
"Analog Devices is in advanced talks to acquire Empower Semiconductor , the closely held Californian power-management chip company, for $1.5bn in cash, Bloomberg reported on Tuesday , citing people familiar with the matter. A transaction could be announced as soon as Tuesday, US time. Neither company has publicly confirmed the discussions on the record."
"What Empower makes is the operationally critical piece behind the AI data-centre buildout. The Milpitas-based company, founded in 2014, designs integrated voltage regulators that sit directly under the GPU or other AI accelerator and deliver more than 3,000 amps of current up through the PCB rather than across it."
"The company's Crescendo platform, unveiled in October 2024, has been the most-cited example of 'vertical power delivery' (VPD), the architectural shift that the largest GPU suppliers have been pushing into their next-generation reference designs as power densities at the rack-level have outgrown traditional lateral power topology."
"The technical claim that has carried Empower into this category is straightforward. Placing the voltage regulator directly under the accelerator, rather than alongside it, can save approximately 20% of total system power on Empower's published estimates, by eliminating the resistive losses incurred when 3,000-amp currents are routed laterally."
#analog-devices #empower-semiconductor #ai-data-center-power-management #vertical-power-delivery-vpd #gpu-power-regulators
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