DC-to-DC converters now found on silicon

The DC-to-DC converters that power electronic circuits can take up nearly a third of a circuit board’s surface area and account for up to half of a circuit’s power consumption. One way to solve the problem is to integrate the converters closer to the circuits they power—in other words, right on the silicon! This ingenious solution would ensure a higher degree of granularity in terms of energy consumption and would also make it possible to adjust power to actual usage.
Researchers at Leti are working with two manufacturers to come up with just such a solution. The researchers designed a 3D on-chip (28 nm FDSOI) power supply to run six processors. The power supply adjusts the transferred amount of energy to meet actual demand from the processors. They built another power supply on FDSOI, this one for a low-power wakeup manager. With static power consumption of just 200 nA and yields of 80%, the chip has established a new state of the art. Two patents have been fi led to protect these developments

Contact: gael.pillonnet@cea.fr

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