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宽动态工作电压范围处理器供电系统设计

Wide Operational Range Processor Power Delivery Design for Both Super-Threshold Voltage and Near-Threshold Voltage Computing

  • 摘要: 由于动态电压频率调节、睿频、近阈值电压等高级功耗管理技术的引入,现代处理器的负载功耗范围极大地扩大了。但由于处理器供电系统的功耗转化效率在不同负载情况下表现出极大的差异,传统供电系统设计不能在整个输出电压范围上维持高功耗转化效率,功耗管理技术节省的功耗会被供电系统中的功耗损失所抵消。结合传统片上电压调整器和片外电压调整器电压转化的优点,本文提出了一种宽工作电压范围的供电系统单元设计方法。在分析了这种设计的功耗转化效率特性后,本文提出了一种基于电压调整器特性的功耗管理算法。同时由于越来越多的处理器核集成在单个芯片上,该供电系统单元可用来构建具备更大供电能力的供电系统。实验证明本文设计方法能够在整个电压区间内提供70%的功耗转化效率,相较于传统的两种供电系统设计方法,本文设计提高了1倍和1.3倍的功耗转化效率。此外这种设计方法在功耗约束的系统上表现出较好的弹性和灵活性。

     

    Abstract: The load power range of modern processors is greatly enlarged because many advanced power management techniques are employed, such as dynamic voltage frequency scaling, Turbo Boosting, and near-threshold voltage (NTV) technologies. However, because the efficiency of power delivery varies greatly with different load conditions, conventional power delivery designs cannot maintain high efficiency over the entire voltage spectrum, and the gained power saving may be offset by power loss in power delivery. We propose SuperRange, a wide operational range power delivery unit. SuperRange complements the power delivery capability of on-chip voltage regulator and off-chip voltage regulator. On top of SuperRange, we analyze its power conversion characteristics and propose a voltage regulator (VR) aware power management algorithm. Moreover, as more and more cores have been integrated on a singe chip, multiple SuperRange units can serve as basic building blocks to build, in a highly scalable way, more powerful power delivery subsystem with larger power capacity. Experimental results show SuperRange unit offers 1x and 1.3x higher power conversion efficiency (PCE) than other two conventional power delivery schemes at NTV region and exhibits an average 70% PCE over entire operational range. It also exhibits superior resilience to power-constrained systems.

     

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