Patent Application
20050248390
The present invention relates to an integrated circuit designed to compensate for fluctuations in current of an on-chip power supply related to switching activity of the integrated circuit and more particularly to a power supply current by-pass circuit controlled by a power supply voltage monitor.
As integrated circuit clock frequencies and circuit densities continue to scale dramatically upward, the importance of a stable power supply voltage becomes critical for reliable operation. Power supply current demand and therefore voltage fluctuation is affected by changes in power consumption on the chip. Sustained changes of on-chip switching activity for more than one clock cycle change the average current demand (ΔI) of CMOS chips and create power voltage noise in the mid-and low frequency range. Thus, switched bypass resistors are often connected directly to the power supply.
The power supply noise is created because the power supply and voltage regulation functions are physically displaced from the chip, resulting in additional power loading on the power supply. Chip modules, circuit card assemblies (CCA) and printed circuit boards (PCB) often combine to present a complex distribution network for on-chip power supply regulation. The un-avoidable inductances in the power delivery network routed from the power supply to the on-chip circuits are a primary source of power supply noise. Increased switching activity causes a drop of the on-chip supply voltage and decreasing switching activity can result in voltage supply overshoot. The on-chip voltage fluctuations are attributable to high switching activity of a large percentage of active devices and their corresponding capacitive loads. This type of fluctuation in power supply voltage tends to occur over a period of about 5 nanoseconds.
Power supply noise impacts chip performance and can cause false switching in logic circuits. Power supply noise becomes more and more critical with increasing ΔI and decreasing supply voltage because noise margins for low voltage circuits are commensurately reduced.
Large leakage currents in the range of about 70 A can operate to reduce power supply noise in CMOS integrated circuits due to a damping effect in supply perturbations and also because of the relatively small dependency of the supply voltage to leakage resistance. However, in current process technologies, leakage currents present a major source of power dissipation as well as unique challenges to chip cooling, thereby mitigating any reliance on leakage currents as a means for reducing power supply noise.
Another common practice to reduce power supply noise is to place decoupling capacitors on-chip as well as on the module, CCA or PCB. On-chip decoupling capacitors are most efficient for mid-frequency power supply noise reduction, but the total amount of decoupling capacitance is limited by the chip size. Moreover, the path inductances of the power delivery network and of the decoupling capacitors themselves are reduced by appropriate design and technology. However, low inductance capacitors (LICA) placed on the module are significantly more expensive than general purpose capacitors.
It is an object of the invention to provide a more stable power supply voltage to on-chip circuitry and to reduce spurious noise on the power distribution network between the power supply and the chip. These and other objects and advantages are achieved by the voltage controlled on-chip bypass circuitry of an integrated circuit according to the appended claims.
An on-chip current regulator is disclosed that compensates for variation in power supply output current due to switching activity of the integrated circuit. A first embodiment is directed to an on-chip power supply by-pass circuit controlled by a voltage monitor. The power supply bypass circuit compensates for fluctuations in power supply current caused by a number of factors, including logic switching, clock gating, voltage domain switching and reduced power dissipation modes. Those skilled in the art will readily appreciate that the crux of the invention is a circuit that correlates switching activity with current demand to regulate the power supply and that a variety of different embodiments and compensation schemes are possible.
The first embodiment includes a voltage controlled on-chip bypass circuit with a scaling unit for the current on-chip supply voltage to provide at least two fractions of the supply voltage; an array of at least two comparators each processing one of the fractional supply voltages and a reference voltage; and at least one bypass resistor per comparator is switched between the supply voltage and ground according to the output signal of the comparator. The scaling unit can be implemented with a series network of resistors to derive the fractional supply voltages. The bypass resistor can be switched by a transistor driven by the output signal of the comparator.
The on-chip voltage monitor compares a fraction of the on-chip supply voltage with a reference voltage and controls a corresponding on-chip power supply bypass. The value of the by-pass resistance R increases with decreasing on-chip supply voltage and decreases with increasing supply voltage. The invention describes how the appropriate resistance as a function of supply voltage R(Vdd) characteristic is realized to reduce or eliminate mid-frequency power supply noise, which is caused by on-chip switching activity variations while at the same time minimizing any additional on-chip power dissipation.
The subject matter that is regarded as the invention is particularly pointed out and distinctly claimed in the concluding portion of the specification. The invention together with further objects and advantages thereof may be best understood by reference to the following description taken in connection with the accompanying drawings in which:
In
The power supply bypass circuit herein represents an effective on-chip power supply bypass resistance network with a R(U) characteristic that can be further optimized according to the actual chip and package parasitic and switching loads.
In
Another aspect of the invention is the realization of a reduction in mid-frequency power supply noise with only a small increase of the overall chip power dissipation (nominal current increases by 40%-100% of ΔI, whereas leakage presently almost doubles the total functional current). Accordingly, the degree of mid-frequency power supply noise reduction is increased by improving the bypass regulation loop and/or increasing the bypass current at nominal voltage.
With the variable bypass resistance feature, the power supply bypass circuit disclosed herein provides improved power supply stability, because the mid-frequency power supply noise may be effectively cancelled with a limited amount of on-chip decoupling capacitance. As such, for noise tolerances within a range of about 60 mV, much lower values of on-chip decoupling capacitance are required for mid-frequency power noise reduction, e.g. 600 nF instead of 2300 nF. In current process technologies 2300 nF would require approximately 31 cm2 of silicon area (assuming 750 pF/mm2), thereby consuming an unreasonably large percentage of total die area. Consequently, providing 2300 nF of on-chip decoupling capacitance is not practical. As a result, other solutions are required to suppress power supply noise in integrated circuits. In comparison, the additional area required for the voltage controlled on-chip power bypass circuits disclosed herein is relatively small.
The power supply bypass circuit with variable resistance of the first embodiment consumes less area and has a positive effect on manufacturing costs because module capacitors with higher inductance (ESL) can be used, e.g. IDC decoupling capacitors instead of LICA decoupling capacitors because the impact of the loop inductance is reduced.
Furthermore a reduced slope of the R(U) characteristic in the range of normal variations of the nominal on-chip voltage (e.g. Vdd +/−5 mV) can be exploited to obtain the desired bypass current for the nominal voltage.
A PI-regulator (proportional integral) or P-regulator (proportional) can be used in conjunction with the bypass resistor network to reduce the mid-frequency power supply noise. While the P-regulator retains an irreducible component of error in the output, the proportional-integral approach enables the power supply voltage to approach a constant output with minimal current variation.
A distribution of the bypass current over the complete chip area is possible, if the chip activity variations are homogeneously distributed (as in case of the simulated example), this, in turn, leads to a homogenous temperature distribution.
VDD voltage scaling and bypass resistor arrays can potentially be repeated independently in several chip areas to fine-tune the granularity of local bypass current very close to thermal hot-spot regions on the die.
For integrated circuits employing multiple voltage domains a separate voltage controlled on-chip power bypass scheme for each voltage domain may be implemented.
While the present invention has been described in detail, in conjunction with specific preferred embodiments, it is evident that many alternatives, modifications and variations will be apparent to those skilled in the art in light of the foregoing description. It is therefore contemplated that the appended claims will embrace any such alternatives, equivalents, modifications and variations as falling within the true scope and spirit of the present invention.
| Number | Date | Country | Kind |
|---|---|---|---|
| 04101937.3 | May 2004 | DE | national |
