National Semiconductor Corporation

Rohm Co., Ltd.

Rohm Powervation Limited

Mark Hartman

Dragan Maksimovic

James Thomas Doyle

Juha Tapani Pennanen

Sandeep Dhar

Pasi Salmi

Jingquan Chen

Ravindra Ambatipudi

Botao Miao

Jeffrey D Mincey

The present application provides a controller for a switching power supply such as a DC-DC converter which provides an output voltage and an output current. The controller is configured to provide at least one control signal to operate the switching power supply to maintain the output voltage at a first reference voltage. The controller employs a load line compensator responsive to output current for adjusting the reference voltage employed by the compensator. The load line compensator employs one or either or both of a high pass filter or saturating element to provide a filtered/saturated value which is the value employed in adjusting the reference voltage.

Power supply controller with a load line compensator

The present application relates to controllers using current mode control to control the operation of switching power supplies such as DC-DC converters. The application provides an inductor current.

Inductor current emulator

A methodology for regulating power supplied to a powered component based on hardware performance, such as may be used in a system that includes the powered component and a switching regulator (EMU or energy management unit) configured to supply a regulated supply voltage to the powered component. Performance monitoring circuitry generates a performance monitoring signal corresponding to a detected performance level of selected digital operations of the powered component relative to a reference performance level. Switching control circuitry provides a switching control signal in response to the performance monitoring signal. In an example embodiments, the switching control circuitry for the switching regulator (switching transistor) is integrated into the powered component, and the detected performance level corresponds to a detected signal path delay associated with the digital operations of the powered component.

Methodology for controlling a switching regulator based on hardware performance monitoring

An apparatus includes a sawtooth generator configured to generate a sawtooth voltage, where the sawtooth generator is configured to repeatedly reset the sawtooth voltage using a clock signal. The apparatus also includes a pulse width modulation (PWM) generator configured to generate a PWM signal using the sawtooth voltage, the PWM signal comprising multiple PWM pulses, where an output voltage is based on the PWM signal. The apparatus further includes a transient detector configured to detect a transient associated with the output voltage and to cause the sawtooth generator to asynchronously reset the sawtooth voltage in response to the detected transient. The resetting of the sawtooth voltage may cause the sawtooth generator to lengthen one or more of the PWM pulses in the PWM signal and/or generate one or more additional PWM pulses in the PWM signal. This can help to increase a duty cycle of the PWM signal.

Pulse width modulator with transient-based asynchronous reset

A system and method is disclosed for providing multi-point calibration of an adaptive voltage scaling (AVS) system. A plurality of Reference Calibration Codes (RCCs) within a multi-point calibration table is provided. Each code is associated with one of the clock frequencies of the adaptive voltage scaling (AVS) system. The present invention provides multi-point calibration by calibrating a Reference Calibration Code (RCC) for each operating point (clock frequency) of the adaptive voltage scaling (AVS) system.

System and method for providing multi-point calibration of an adaptive voltage scaling system

A method and apparatus is arranged to produce high precision output voltage matching in a multiple output power converter. A two-output voltage converter includes a positive and a negative voltage output that are approximately equal in magnitude. The power converter includes inductors, transfer capacitance circuitry, and a controlled switching circuit. In one operating mode, the switching circuit is closed, the inductors are charged, and energy from the input signal is stored in the transfer capacitance circuitry. In a second operating mode, the switching circuit is opened, and the stored energy is transferred to the output loads. The transfer capacitance circuitry is arranged to provide improved matching in the output voltages. The two-output power converter topology may be extended to provide multiple outputs.

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Santa Clara, CA, United States of America

Mark Hartman