Enphase Energy, Inc. (NASDAQ: ENPH) published a technical white paper on its Kestrel application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC), which the company describes as its fifth generation of custom silicon for power conversion, according to a press release.

The Kestrel chip is fabricated using a 22-nanometer complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor process and integrates power conversion control, sensing, communications, protection, security, and safety functions into a single platform. Enphase says the chip is designed for use across multiple product lines, including microinverters, next-generation IQ Battery systems, the IQ Bidirectional EV Charger, and the IQ Solid-State Transformer (IQ SST).

"Kestrel is an important milestone because it turns Enphase's custom silicon into a reusable platform for multiple product families," said Raghu Belur, co-founder and chief product officer of Enphase Energy.

The white paper details the chip's role in enabling high-frequency operation with gallium nitride bi-directional switch technology, including a closed-loop control bandwidth exceeding 100 kHz. For the IQ SST module, the architecture uses two Kestrel ASICs communicating over fiber-optic links across a medium-voltage isolation boundary.

The paper also addresses data center power applications, stating the IQ SST architecture is designed to support sub-millisecond transient response to handle GPU rack load swings, potentially eliminating the need for local energy buffering near compute racks.

"Kestrel was designed because the control problem cannot be solved well enough with a commodity microcontroller," said Hans van Antwerpen, chief technology officer of Enphase Energy.

Additional features described in the white paper include hardware AES and SHA cryptography acceleration, secure boot, true random number generation, and functional safety capabilities such as single-bit error correction and double-bit error detection.