Design and Characterization of a High Slew Rate Electronic Load for Data Center Power Converter Validation

The growing power consumption from AI and cloud computing motivates energy efficient power conversion in data centers. Power converters must be properly tested during development under the unique load conditions in this space due to CPU/GPU dynamics. This work explores the design of a closed-loop electronic load for transient and steady-state testing of DC-DC data center power converters. The proposed op-amp based closed loop solution allows for accurate and programmable current control. The Miller effect is leveraged in the feedback network to obtain a large closed-loop bandwidth while maintaining sufficient stability. A 3.45 MHz closed-loop bandwidth, 540 A/µs slew rate hardware prototype is constructed and validated under pulse testing and arbitrary waveform input.