Texas Instruments: From Planar to GaN — 40 Years of Power Semiconductor Evolution and the Next Technology Revolution
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Power semiconductor technology has undergone a remarkable four-decade transformation, evolving from conventional planar MOSFETs to wide-bandgap gallium nitride (GaN) devices that continually push the boundaries of efficiency and power density.
While market attention remains fixated on AI chips, HBM, and advanced packaging, the power semiconductor supply chain is undergoing a rapid, equally consequential upgrade. As GPU power consumption reaches unprecedented highs and data center electricity demand surges, traditional power delivery architectures face extraordinary challenges. To maximize the value of every kilowatt-hour, device technologies including MOSFETs, LDMOS, and GaN are entering a new cycle of innovation.
Future gains in power density will no longer depend on single-process advancements alone. Instead, progress will require coordinated evolution across device architecture, materials engineering, and advanced packaging. The industry's journey spans continued MOSFET scaling, RESURF and Super Junction electric field engineering, CMOS-compatible LDMOS platforms, and the emergence of GaN wide-bandgap semiconductors.
As AI server power consumption moves toward kilowatt-class operation and individual data center racks scale toward 20 kW, 40 kW, and beyond, an industrial revolution centered on high-efficiency energy conversion and power architecture restructuring is already underway. Behind the explosive growth in AI computing lies, fundamentally, a fierce upgrade race across the entire power semiconductor value chain.