Source

Tags: ai-power, vrm, mpwr, mps, aosl, openvreg, vicor, infineon, delta, power-integrations, murata, mlcc, gpu-current, ir-drop, last-1cm

• Source: The Economics of the Last 1 cm
• Author: Nutty (@NuttyCLD)
• Date published: 2026-04-28
• Date captured: 2026-05-01

TL;DR

(Note: post is paywalled; the captured portion is the public preview.) Sequel to AI Power Crisis Part 3, zooming in on the five companies on the last 1 cm. Frames the same current as flowing through five very different income statements. MPS lost a quarter and gained it back the next — beneath that, five companies are diverging in five directions. Like an intersection: one sells the entire traffic-control system (MPS), another was first into a newly standardized lane (AOSL), a third builds an underground entrance directly to the destination (Infineon+Delta VPD), a fourth collects tolls on road design (Power Integrations / Vicor IP), and a fifth points at the parking lot inside the destination (Murata MLCCs).

Key takeaways

• The arithmetic of the "last 1 cm": 1,000W at 800V = 1.25A. At 0.75V = ~1,300A+. At 2,000A through 0.2mΩ = hundreds of watts of loss.
• The B200 at 1,000W in 0.7V range easily exceeds 1,000A on the core rail. Rubin pushes package-level current into several thousand A.
• OpenVReg is NVIDIA's standardization play for package, pinout, basic functionality. Solves multi-sourcing + cost. But Open...