Per-Core Configurable Power Supply for Multi-Core Processors with Ultra-Fast DVS Voltage Transitions

This paper proposes a reconfigurable DC-DC buck converter architecture for per-core DVS in multi-core processors. The output voltage in each core can be rapidly changed with substantially reduced time and energy overheads, thereby improving the energy efficiency. The proposed architecture can be configured to a single-phase or a multi-phase buck converter, depending on the DVS voltage requirements. This overcomes the conflicting design criteria and realizes a high-resolution DVS using a voltage dithering technique with reduced time and energy overheads. A hardware prototype is made, and the test results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed topology over existing architectures. The digital controller is implemented using a field programmable gate array (FPGA) device.