Cooperation between Distributed Power Modules for SoC Power Management

Distributed power delivery is blooming in SoC power system because the fine-grained power management needs separate power sources to adjust each voltage island dynamically. In addition, dedicated power sources for critical circuit blocks can achieve better signal integrity. To extensively utilize the power modules when they are redundant and idle, this work applies the cooperation concept in SoC power management. The key controller is a mixed-signal estimator that executes the intelligent procedures, like real-time swap the power module depending on its loading and healthy condition, automatically configure the power system with phase interleaving, and support all the peripheral functions. To demonstrate the proposed concept, a prototype chip for voltage down-conversion is implemented. This chip contains four switched-inductor converter modules to emulate the cooperative power network. Each module is small therefore the power efficiency is not optimal for the heavy load. With the cooperation between power modules, the power efficiency is 88% for 300mA load, that is 8.5% higher than the single module operation. key words: cooperative power management, distributed power system, fine-grained power control, system-on-chip