Nvidia is developing a new power infrastructure called the 800V HVDC architecture to deliver the power requirements of 1 MW server racks and more, with plans to deploy it by 2027. According to Nvidia, the current 54V DC power distribution system is already reaching its limit as racks begin to exceed 200 kilowatts. As AI chips become more powerful and demand more electricity, these existing systems would no longer be able to practically keep up, requiring data centers to build new solutions so that their electrical circuits do not get overwhelmed.
For example, Nvidia says that its GB200 NVL72 or GB300 NVL72 needs around eight power shelves. If it used 54V DC power distribution, the power shelves would consume 64 U of rack space, which is more than what the average server rack can accommodate. Aside from this, it also said that delivering 1 MW using 54V DC requires a 200 kg copper busbar — that means a gigawatt AI data center, which many companies are now racing to build, would need 500,000 tons of copper. This is nearly half of the U.S.’s total copper output in 2024, and that’s just for one site.
