On-chip digital power supply control for system-on-chip applications

Abstract

The authors presented an on-chip, fully-digital, power-supply control system. The scheme consists of two independent control loops that regulate power supply variations due to semiconductor process spread, temperature, and chip's workload. Smart power-switches working as linear voltage regulators are used to adjust the local power supply. The smart power-switch allows us to keep the global power network unchanged. It offers an integrated standby mode and has a fast dynamic response, i.e. low transition times between voltage steps at the cost of the reduced power conversion efficiency when compared to complex DC-DC converters.