Intel is changing the future of power supplies with its ATX12VO spec • Hacker News Board

Re: Intel is changing the future of power supplies with its ATX12VO spec

#171

Post by chungus_khan » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 4:30 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #10

throwaway2048 wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

pretty much all modern boards use DC/DC power stages from 12v, even for 5v and 3.3v stuff.

Indeed, found that for myself when got into mobo design. ATX 5V is really unsuitable for USB power, and can play tricks on you. Similarly, 3.3V from PSU is useless at powering 3.3V logic. You have to do power staging on board to guarantee that PCI and i2c stuff turns on after the bridge/soc. Some PSUs don't follow reset timings, or don't do them at all on standby rail. So if you do ATX power by the book, you may end…

Yeah, unfortunately we've thoroughly decayed past the good old AT days of being able to power logic straight off of the 5V.

It helped that in those days there was one IBM making the PCs.

Re: Intel is changing the future of power supplies with its ATX12VO spec

#172

Post by ChuckMcM » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 5:42 PM UTC

effie wrote: post #139

ChuckMcM wrote: post #88

I remember the days when Microsoft and Intel would host the "PCxx" spec (where xx was the last two digits of the year) and tell everyone what all the standards for desktop machines were going to be for the next few years. Those days are gone though. 12V rail PSUs are nice for a number of reasons but I always liked that you could feed your DC input from the AC side or a battery and have a "free" UPS at the same time.…

I am very much interested in this, using DC power sources is the future. How do I go around adding a 12V DC power supply to the ordinary ATX computer? Can you find some links for this?

Such supplies exist for some levels of power. Very popular in the MiniITX community where power levels are For a non-engineer putting something together I would look at DC-DC converter modules (see https://www.digikey.com/products/en/power-supplies-board-mou...) that provided the necessary power rails, at the power level that was required.

Such a solution would not be compact and integrated like one that was designed from scratch to be used in this way, but would certainly work.

I used one of the MiniITX supplies to power a system that is mounted in a box on a tree with a solar panel charging a deep cycle battery. It is the download/storage point for a number of wildlife cameras nearby.

[1] https://www.amazon.com/250w-DC-ATX-Power-Supply-Supplies/dp/...

Re: Intel is changing the future of power supplies with its ATX12VO spec

#173

Post by murillians » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 7:16 PM UTC

jaclaz wrote: post #151

unlinked_dll wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you buying bottom of the barrel PSUs? I've had the same Corsair unit in three machines over the last decade. Works perfectly fine.

>Are you buying bottom of the barrel PSUs? If you mean that "standard" OEM PSU's (think Asus, Fujitsu, IBM/Lenovo and a few - mini-ITX Shuttle cases) are "bottom of the barrel", yes. Then, since often an used, original, non-standard (say) IBM/Lenovo PSU can be found for a mere 100-150 € on e-bay, I started getting el-cheapo (though not el-cheap est ) ones with no appreciable decrease (or increase) in durability, putt…

That is an insane rate to be going through PSU's. Many of the enthusiast PSU's myself and friends have put into our computers usually outlive the other components. Generic grey box PSU's off ebay usually dont have the same standards as a SeaSonic or Thermaltake unit

Re: Intel is changing the future of power supplies with its ATX12VO spec

#174

Post by willis936 » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 9:21 PM UTC

willis936 wrote: post #163

PaulDavisThe1st wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"noisy" in this context referred to the output signal, not the acoustic levels. Also, the 12VDC native monitor that I did buy didn't have a unique plug. It used the fairly standard ring/core 12VDC jack and plug found in many different contexts, though not a lot of digital ones.

12V / 6mV is ~33 dB SNR. What’s more is that the 6 mV ripple on this supply’s 12V rail is p-p and not RMS. So for most apples to apples measurements it’d be more accurate to say the SNR is closer to 35 dB. Regardless, seasonic supplies, and this one in particular, are very low noise. Most supplies are closer to 30mV ripple on the 12V rail.

Whoops. This should be 66-70 dB. I accidentally used power log rather than voltage log.

Re: Intel is changing the future of power supplies with its ATX12VO spec

#175

Post by wlesieutre » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 9:38 PM UTC

willis936 wrote: post #146

wlesieutre wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bulkiness is my main complaint, they can be a real nuisance in small form factor cases.

Industrial design demands this. A replacement connector should be difficult to remove and use sufficiently thick cables. Because of the requirements there is little room for improvement and thus we have used the same connectors for 30 years.

The molex 2.36mm pins can apparently carry 8.5A, which at 12V gives you about 100W. That’s useful for some power hungry components, but I wish there were a smaller alternate 4-pin power cable standard that I could use to route power around to things like fans and SATA SSDs.

Something in between the giant molex connectors and a 3-pin fan connector.

Re: Intel is changing the future of power supplies with its ATX12VO spec

#176

Post by superkuh » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 9:45 PM UTC

baybal2 wrote: post #22

superkuh wrote: post #11

This makes sense for specific use case computers, specialty ones, etc. So it'll be adopted. And because of economies of scale it'll push into actual desktop computers and their mobos. Having to dissipate all that heat on/in the mobo will be terrible for actual desktop computers. But it'll happen anyway because it's better for corporations and the desktop market doesn't drive their decisions.

You already dissipate quite a lot in CPU VRMs. For everything 3.3V on mobo, a linear reg on board will still be more efficient than one in the PSU.

And the VRMs and associated circuitry are the most likely thing to die on the motherboard. The PSU, at least in my experience, is the most likely thing to die in a desktop computer. So now you have all the most likely to die components on the most expensive part of your desktop system.

Being able to replace the PSU without the cost of the mobo is great for human people. For corporate people and their economies of scale it makes less sense than just making everything 1 thing and throwing it out when it breaks.

Re: Intel is changing the future of power supplies with its ATX12VO spec

#177

Post by roblabla » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 9:47 PM UTC

maallooc wrote: post #152

theandrewbailey wrote: post #147

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Also, it’s not a good idea to rely on others, because they can screw up. Remember 28nm and the graphics fiasco? How long has Intel had 10nm on it's roadmap? I think their earliest roadmaps said it should have happened 5 years ago.

https://en.wikichip.org/w/images/thumb/5/5c/7nm_densities.sv... Because their 10nm is denser than tsmc's so called 7nm ?

TSMC has a new process called N7P EUV that has a higher density than Intel's 10nm process[0], in production since last year. They also are on track to have their N5 process in production next year, which is supposed to have an even higher density[1]. Obviously, N5 isn't in prod yet so this is just a roadmap, maybe they'll hit roadblocks like intel here.

But still, it's disingenuous to claim that Intel is trying something that wasn't achieved by TSMC already. TSMC has already beaten Intel on transistor density fair and square.

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/7_nm_process#7_nm_process_node...

[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/5_nm_process#5_nm_process_node...

Re: Intel is changing the future of power supplies with its ATX12VO spec

#178

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Mar 10, 2020, 10:09 PM UTC

numpad0 wrote: post #98

vifya wrote: post #53

It was bound to happen eventually, there has been a long trend towards point-of-use regulation displacing multiple output supplies. I'm just surprised they went with 12V, and not 19V which has lower rectification losses, less power loss to wire/trace resistance, and a large existing design ecosystem from laptops where 19V has been the norm for years.

Why is it 19V for laptops? I had suspected it’s to compensate for voltage drop at linear regulators. Batteries are either 11.1(3.7v 4 cells) or 14.8(3.7v 3 cells 1-3 parallel) and these voltages doesn’t seem immediately consistent with ATX12V to me.

[deleted]

Re: Intel is changing the future of power supplies with its ATX12VO spec

#179

Post by effie » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 1:35 AM UTC

ChuckMcM wrote: post #172

effie wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am very much interested in this, using DC power sources is the future. How do I go around adding a 12V DC power supply to the ordinary ATX computer? Can you find some links for this?

Such supplies exist for some levels of power. Very popular in the MiniITX community where power levels are For a non-engineer putting something together I would look at DC-DC converter modules (see https://www.digikey.com/products/en/power-supplies-board-mou... ) that provided the necessary power rails, at the power level that was required. Such a solution would not be compact and integrated like one that was designe…

Thanks, this is useful. I am thinking about building a UPS at home from batteries, so it can supply around 650W of DC power. I assume that using voltage of 12V on the supply side of the DC-DC converter would be too energy-inefficient for such high a power, so I'm thinking I'd better string such 12V batteries in series to get higher voltage, say 300 V. This should have minimal transmission losses, so I can lead this to my DC-DC converter via standard electric wires.

Re: Intel is changing the future of power supplies with its ATX12VO spec

#180

Post by maallooc » Wed, Mar 11, 2020, 1:36 AM UTC

roblabla wrote: post #177

maallooc wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://en.wikichip.org/w/images/thumb/5/5c/7nm_densities.sv... Because their 10nm is denser than tsmc's so called 7nm ?

TSMC has a new process called N7P EUV that has a higher density than Intel's 10nm process[0], in production since last year. They also are on track to have their N5 process in production next year, which is supposed to have an even higher density[1]. Obviously, N5 isn't in prod yet so this is just a roadmap, maybe they'll hit roadblocks like intel here. But still, it's disingenuous to claim that Intel is trying somet…

N7+ EUV is 1.2x denser but also it's yield is horrible according to sources. https://wccftech.com/tsmc-7nm-euv-yield-alleged/

And you can't compare tsmc vs Intel directly because their target chip size is different. Intel produces chips size of avg. 180mm² while tsmc and others aim for under 80mm². Even the industry leader producing small chips are suffering in yield for ranges of 113MTr/mm². Intel producing huge chips with 100.76MTr/mm² density even without EUV means they are going through the right way.

With those knoledges on non-EUV nodes I expect Intel to be on par (which it already is) or be superior than others in about 1-2 years. https://en.wikichip.org/wiki/File:5nm_densities.svg

People having insight to this industry doesn't think Intel has ever been left behind in this race towards density. Fanboys and regular people influenced by the media does.