Date: 28/02/2012

ICs can integrate on-chip voltage regulators

Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) and Columbia University have announced research results that place industry focus back onto voltage regulators as a solution for continued processor scalability. SRC says having just proven a new generation of integrated voltage regulator (IVR) that features energy densities more than ten times that of present state-of-art inductors available on computer chips, the team is preparing to test a second round of prototypes.

"A key to further scaling is the ability to scale the energy storage elements required for these voltage regulators," said Professor Ken Shepard, lead researcher for the team at Columbia. "By developing power converters that are small enough to be integrated on the same chip or in the same package as microprocessors, we can significantly improve computational performance per watt of power consumed."

"This technology is nearing industry adoption and can significantly benefit society while helping semiconductor companies to improve performance-per-watt for their products," said Betsy Weitzman, SRC executive vice president. "End users will want products such as smartphones, laptops and servers to employ this technology because it will deliver reduced system power consumption and the potential for improved computational performance."

According to SRC magnetic materials required of the power inductors are deposited as part of a custom process, integrated with traditional CMOS fabrication.

More information about the research is published in the paper titled, "A 2.5D Integrated Voltage Regulator Using Coupled Magnetic Core Inductors on Silicon Interposer Delivering 10.8A/mm2,"