Semiconductor Components Industries, LLC

Margaret Spillane

Paul J Harriman

Thomas Duffy

Michael Scott Lay

Kevin Kelliher

James George Hill

Owen Cregg

Han Zou

Kieran Burke

Gary Dillon

A driver can be configured to provide sensed phase currents as feedback to a controller to indicate the output currents from each phase of a switch mode power supply (SMPS). The driver can be configured to temperature compensate the sensed currents in one of two ways. If a temperature sensor is directly coupled to the driver, then the driver may be configured to temperature compensate the sensed currents from each phase based on a temperature measurement made by the temperature sensor. If a temperature sensor is not directly coupled to the driver, then the driver may be configured to temperature compensate the sensed current from each phase based on a temperature signal received from a bus coupled to the driver. The bus can communicate the temperature signal so that multiple drivers can utilize one temperature sensor.

Gate driver with thermal monitoring and current sensing

A multi-phase power system configured to add and remove phases according to a plurality of states can increase the efficiency of the power system, which can increase a battery life in mobile applications. After phases are shed, a load may quickly change requiring all phases to be activated before an over current protection triggers a shutdown. The response of the power system to these load transients may be improved through the use of multiple triggers, which can provide an early warning of the changing load requirements more accurately and consistently than a single trigger.

Power system having multi-trigger all-phase activation

A multiphase power stage that includes addressing and communication techniques to read temperatures of the phases for thermal load balancing is disclosed. The disclosure describes driver modules that can be assigned addresses for serial communication on a common communication bus by temporarily communicating the addresses over dedicated pulse width modulation connections between the driver modules and the controller. After assignment, a temperature request message, addressed to a driver module, can trigger the driver module to transmit an analog temperature signal to a common temperature bus coupled between the driver modules and the controller. The temperatures of the driver modules may be collected in order to activate and deactivate driver modules based on their temperatures, which can balance a thermal load on the multiphase power stage.

Monitoring temperature per phase in a multiphase power stage

A power stage configured for assigning each phase a unique address is disclosed. In particular, the disclosed power stage includes temporarily using a dedicated pulse width modulation (PWM) connection between a controller and a phase to assign a unique address to the phase. Then, after the assignment, the PWM connection may be returned to use for regulation, while the phases can communicate over a common communication bus using their assigned addresses. This addressed communication can be used to control a power state of all phases, all phases of a particular rail, or a particular phase. Controlling the power state with addressed commands communicated over a communication bus can help reduce the current consumed by the power stage during light load conditions or sleep states.

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Limerick, Ireland

Margaret Spillane