On-Chip Point-of-Load Voltage Regulator forDistributed Power Supplies

摘要

An ultra-low area, current efficient voltage regulator appropriate for distributed point-of-load voltage regulation in high performance integrated circuits (ICs) is described in this paper. The proposed voltage regulator is a hybrid combination of a switching voltage regulator and a linear voltage regulator. The voltage regulator can supply over 100 mA current while generating 0.9 volts from a 1.2 input voltage. The current efficiency exceeds 99% while the load regulation to a step current ranges between 40 ns and 60 ns. No output capacitor is required to ensure stability. Hence, the required on-chip area is as small as 0.026 mm2 for the proposed voltage regulator which is approximately four to six times smaller than area efficient low dropout regulators. The proposed circuit therefore provides a means for distributing multiple local power supplies across an integrated circuit, maintaining high current efficiency and small area.