SBIR Phase I: Integrated Voltage Regulators for Small Footprint, Efficient Power Delivery in Multi-Core SoCs

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project seeks to develop integrated voltage regulators that are 20 times smaller than existing DC-DC converters and enable better power management for processors. Modern processors use a large number of voltage domains to improve energy utilization of processing cores and IP blocks. The problem is that each voltage domain requires a separate DC-DC converter and existing converters require board components including inductors, capacitors, power switch and a controller chip. As a result, the number of board components increases dramatically for complex processors that need a large number of voltage domains. This leads to large board area overhead, high component cost and complex board-level power delivery. This project aims to develop a single-die voltage regulator that eliminates all board components and integrates everything in a single die regardless of the number of voltages the regulator needs to provide to the processor. This new regulator will reduce board footprint, which is very important in both mobile and data-center applications, and reduce component cost. This regulator also has the potential to reduce power consumption of processors by up to 30% by enabling more efficient, finer-grain power management. The broader impact/commercial potential of this project is reduction in size, cost and power consumption of power delivery solutions for processors and logic chips in a wide range of applications from smartphones to datacenters. In a smartphone, voltage regulators are one of the biggest components other than the battery. While customers demand lighter, thinner smartphones, increasingly more space is required for new features such as 4G communication, micro-projectors and high-resolution cameras. Reducing the size of voltage regulators is critical in creating space for new features in next-generation mobile devices. Moreover, saving processor power using the new regulator can increase battery life. Reducing power and size are not only important for mobile devices, but also for server processors deployed in data-centers necessary to support increasing web traffic. Saving processor power directly translates to lower cooling costs in data-centers and reduction in CO2 emission. By reducing the size of regulators, more processors can be stored in a limited area to create more powerful servers for data-centers without increasing real estate. Impacting processors across the globe, the new regulator has the potential to disrupt the $10B voltage regulator market and enable further innovation in mobile devices and servers.