Intel Corporation

Saravanan Ramamoorthy

Fabrice Paillet

Sergio Carlo Rodriguez

Sami Hyvonen

Cary Renzema

James Keith Hodgson

Anand Ramasundar

Christopher J Mandic

Po-Cheng Chen

Alex Santiago Rodriguez

Ruthvin Jeevan Suvarna

A reduced-size replica of power gate transistors may be used within a closed-loop voltage regulator to measure the average current delivered by the transistors in the non-replica power gate. The measured current is compared against a known reference current, and a feedback loop is used to modify the gate bias of the power gate and replica power gate transistors. An improved current sensing power gate replica solution may include measuring current from a small replica of the power gate and extrapolating the total current by digitally multiplying the replica current by the ratio of the size of the enabled power gates to the size of the replicas. The current through the replicas, which substantially matches the current in equivalent power gate devices, may be collected on an analog bus and conducted across a known resistor to generate a voltage that determines an estimated current of the power gate devices.

Digital voltage regulator current sensing and regulation

Growing community of inventors

Beaverton, OR, United States of America

Saravanan Ramamoorthy