A novel distributed control and its tolerance analysis for microprocessor power management

To achieve higher power density and higher order of design flexibility with unlimited phase number, the concept of monolithic/modularized voltage regulator channel (MVRC) is introduced as a generic power IC solution for both CPU and POL (point of load) power management. Novel control schemes and analog circuits are proposed to implement the MVRC concept. They include: a novel distributed interleaving scheme; a distributed current sharing and adaptive voltage position (AVP) scheme. Tolerance analysis and hardware testing results verify that the proposed control is suitable for today and future´s microprocessor power management.