Integrated Hybrid Switched-Capacitor Converters for Point of Load Power Delivery
- Assem, Pourya
- Advisor(s): Pilawa, Robert
Abstract
The Hybrid Switched-Capacitor (SC) converters have shown potentials for higher efficiency andpower-density compared with magnetic and pure SC converters. These advantages have driven new architectures and control schemes suitable for power converters integration in advanced CMOS technology nodes by alleviating the device stress and size. This work focuses on integration of the popular hybrid Dickson SC and cascaded resonant SC converters for high efficiency and power- density DC-DC conversion in datacenter and embedded applications covering few mW to hundreds of W load range. The first test chip is a hybrid Dickson SC converter for battery powered embedded and mobile applications where the demand focuses on high efficiency and power-density across a large conversion ratio of 3.4 V - 4.2 V for Lithium-ion batteries down to 0.3 V - 0.9 V with load range up to 1.5 A for digital processors and peripherals in advanced CMOS technology nodes. The second test chip is dual-phase time-interleaved extension of the hybrid Dickson SC converter designed with coupled-inductor and multiple outputs for application in multi-core processors with dynamic volt- age scaling. The focus of the second test chip is improved efficiency through time-based control and dual-phase operation as well as a higher power-density through compact die-stacked packaging of passive components. The converter is designed for input voltage range of 3.2 V - 3.6 V DC bus conversion down to load voltage of 0.7 V - 1 V with load range up to 1.4 A. The third test chip integrates gate-driver, bootstrap and control peripherals of the cascaded discrete resonant SC converter for higher power conversion from 48 V DC bus down to 6 V intermediate bus. The focus of the third test chip is design of a single-package peripheral for improved efficiency and power- density. In addition, integrating the start-up and shutdown peripherals enables hot swapping in datacenter applications.