An on-chip resonant-gate-drive switched-capacitor converter for near-threshold computing achieving 70.2% efficiency at 0.92A/mm2 current density and 0.4V output

Abstract

Near-threshold computing (NTC) is a promising approach to address the increasing demand for energy efficiency in computing platforms. In NTC, the supply voltage is scaled down to realize quadratic energy savings while degrading the operating frequency only linearly, which can be compensated by using many-core architectures. However, practical implementation of many-core NTC systems requires a large number of on-chip DC-DC converters to provide each core with independent voltages and fast dynamic voltage scaling at a reduced cost. Moreover, these converters must support heavy loads (a few hundreds of milliamps) to supply the current required per core, or cluster of cores, while occupying minimal area (i.e. high current density) and achieving high power-conversion efficiency at low output voltages.