noteProject Overview
Increasingly electrified and digitalized society can realize Carbon Neutrality in all fields including manufacturing, services, transportation, and infrastructure. Therefore, the semiconductor/information and communication industries, as a foundation for digitization and electrification, are the key to advancing green and digital initiatives at the same time.
In addition, Power semiconductors are used to control various electrical products related to everyday life, such as automobiles and industrial equipment, electric power generation and railways, and home appliances.
To realize a carbon-neutral society, the energy efficiency of such electric devices is extremely important. Demand is expected to increase with the development of electric and digital technologies in the following areas:
1. Medium-capacity electric vehicles, 2. Large-capacity renewable energy power generation systems, and 3. Power supplies for small-capacity data centers.
Moreover, data flows are increasing rapidly (at an annual rate of approximately 30%), resulting in a steady expansion in the market for data center servers. Because of this rapid increase in large-scale data centers, power consumption for all data centers is expected to increase, and the current pace of technological evolution will not be able to keep pace with increases in power consumption.
The aim of this project, therefore, is by 2030 to: reduce the power loss of next-generation power semiconductors by more than 50%, reduce the cost of such semiconductors to a level similar to that of silicon(Si) power semiconductors, and improve data center efficiency by over 40%.
Project Features
〇 Development of next-generation green power semiconductor technology
The aim of this project is to reduce the power loss of next-generation power semiconductors (SiC, GaN, etc.) by more than 50% and reducing their cost to achieve similar cost levels to those of Si power semiconductors, in order to promote their social implementation in the fields where innovative improvements in energy efficiency are required toward carbon neutrality, such as electric vehicles, electric power generation (e.g., by renewable energy) and server power supplies.
〇 Development of next-generation green data center technology
The aim of this project is to significantly improve the energy efficiency of data centers (i.e., data aggregation hubs) by over 40% through innovative photonics-electronics convergence technology that replaces electrical wiring inside servers with optical wiring.