“AI is making power architecture a strategic design decision,” said James Hitchcock, Vice President and General Manager of the EA Portfolio at Tektronix. “The systems built for earlier generations of compute were not designed for the scale or pace of today’s AI workloads, and power systems can no longer be treated as one-size-fits-all. The opportunity is to design and validate more efficient, resilient power architectures for the AI infrastructure being built today, with test systems that can keep pace with the speed and scale of the change.”

Dynamic validation without the traditional trade-off

Traditional high-power test approaches can force teams to choose between recreating fast-changing load behavior and managing the heat, cooling and grid demands of dissipative testing. Drawing on EA’s longstanding expertise in ultra-high-power programmable DC test systems, the EA-ELR 21000 system combines high-dynamic load emulation with a fully regenerative architecture in one coordinated system.

That combination changes what is practical in the lab. High-dynamic load emulation helps engineers expose voltage droop, recovery and stability issues before power infrastructure reaches the data center. Its fully regenerative architecture helps them sustain those tests at high power, with the AC input primarily supporting system losses rather than full peak test power.

The EA-ELR 21000 Dynamic Test System delivers:

• Up to 12 amperes per microsecond at 240 kilowatts of current slew rate to emulate the rapid load transitions that challenge 800-volt power shelves and power racks.
• Up to 95% regenerative efficiency to return absorbed energy to the grid, helping reduce lab heat and cooling demand while easing power-infrastructure requirements for long-duration efficiency, burn-in, endurance and lifetime testing.
• Up to 1.92 megawatts of modular test capacity across up to eight racks and 64 loads, expanding in 30-kilowatt increments so teams can grow validation capacity as rack and infrastructure power requirements increase. Each rack delivers up to 240 kilowatts in a compact 0.6-square-meter footprint.

The EA-ELR 21000-80 4U HS is rated for up to 1,000 volts, 80 amperes and 30 kilowatts in 4U, giving teams the voltage headroom needed to evaluate 800-volt DC power architectures. Integrated waveform generation supports repeatable load profiles, while coordinated controls enable multiple loads to operate as one synchronized test system. The modular architecture also lets teams add capacity as requirements evolve and service individual modules without disrupting the entire system.

The EA-ELR 21000 is designed for power shelves and power racks supporting 800-volt DC distribution, as well as solid-state transformers that convert medium-voltage AC power for high-power DC infrastructure. It gives manufacturers a way to evaluate dynamic behavior, stability, conversion efficiency and long-term reliability before those systems are deployed in AI data centers.

Coming this fall: high-dynamic regenerative test for the next power stage

Later this fall, Tektronix will introduce the EA-ELR 20080-1000 4U HS, an 80-volt, 1,000-ampere regenerative electronic load module designed to help engineers validate the 48- to 54-volt rail that carries high current closer to AI compute. Part of Tektronix’s ongoing innovation in high-power test, the module will help ensure engineers have the right tools for the next major conversion stage in the AI data center power path.