A Stabilizing Centralized Controller for On-Chip Power Delivery Networks

A major challenge currently facing integrated systems, such as microprocessors and systems-on-chip is power delivery. With increasing system size and complexity, multiple voltage regulators are often needed for a single power domain. This connection raises non-trivial stability issues that often render the system useless. It is therefore of great practical interest to tackle the stability of such systems. This brief proposes the design of a centralized controller with the aim of rendering such power delivery networks (PDNs) stable without compromising their performance. Theoretical results are confirmed with extensive transistor-level simulations and demonstrate that the controller is capable of stabilizing PDNs with much greater area efficiency than conventional techniques.