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Feasibility of Monolithic and 3D-Stacked DC-DC Converters for Microprocessors in 90nm Technology Generation

  • Gerhard Schrom
  • , Peter Hazucha
  • , Jae Hong Hahn
  • , Volkan Kursun
  • , Donald Gardner
  • , Siva Narendra
  • , Tanay Karnik
  • , Vivek De

Research output: Contribution to journalConference article published in journalpeer-review

Abstract

Rapidly increasing input current of microprocessors resulted in rising cost and motherboard real estate occupied by decoupling capacitors and power routing. We show by analysis that an on-die switching DC-DC converter is feasible for future microprocessor power delivery. The DC-DC converter can be fabricated in an existing CMOS process (90nm-180nm) with a back-end thin-film inductor module. We show that 85% efficiency and 10% output voltage droop can be achieved for 4:1, 3:1, and 2:1 conversion ratios, area overhead of 5% and no additional on-die decoupling capacitance. A 4:1 conversion results in 3.4x smaller input current and 6.8x smaller external decoupling.

Original languageEnglish
Article number1349348
Pages (from-to)263-268
Number of pages6
JournalProceedings of the International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design
Volume2004-January
Issue numberJanuary
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2004
Externally publishedYes
Event2004 International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design, ISLPED 2004 - Newport Beach, United States
Duration: 9 Aug 200411 Aug 2004

Bibliographical note

Publisher Copyright:
© 2004 ACM.

Keywords

  • 3-D integration
  • DC-DC converter
  • integrated magnetics
  • on-die switching converter
  • power delivery

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