Voltage Regulation for Deep Sub-Micron Processors Goes Digital

摘要

Growing performance gaps between processors and power supplies threaten to dimmish overall system performance ― an issue promising only to grow worse as processors continue along Moore's Law and applications continue to grow exponentially in complexity. Increasingly, chipmakers and system OEMs consider power requirements to be a strategic impera- tive as imbalances in processor power performance ratios are highlighted in industry keynotes and technology trend articles. Intel CTO Pat Gelsinger described the power issue in his keynote address at a recent Intel Developer Forum. "We predict that the next 10 years [of Moore's Law] are limited by power and by the limitations that power imposes on the physical form factors that these devices ultimately end up [with]...If you look at this curve, we've gone smoothly from one watt to 10 watts, 10 to 100 watts, and we're on track to go from 100 to a 1,000 watts. And what's beyond that? 10,000. Exponentials are incredible when they're working for you. When working against you, they're not so nice... People are not going to carry rocket nozzles on their laptops."