TY - JOUR
T1 - Mini-LEGO CPU Voltage Regulator
AU - Elasser, Youssef
AU - Baek, Jaeil
AU - Radhakrishnan, Kaladhar
AU - Gan, Houle
AU - Douglas, Jonathan P.
AU - Krishnamurthy, Harish K.
AU - Li, Xin
AU - Jiang, Shuai
AU - De, Vivek
AU - Sullivan, Charles R.
AU - Chen, Minjie
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 1986-2012 IEEE.
PY - 2024/3/1
Y1 - 2024/3/1
N2 - This article presents the design and optimization of a miniaturized 48-V-to-1-V, 240-A linear-extendable group operated point-of-load (LEGO-PoL) CPU voltage regulator module (VRM) - Mini-LEGO - with a volume of 30 mm×11.2 mm × 8.4 mm. The Mini-LEGO converter provides vertical power delivery, and it achieves a peak efficiency of 87.1%, a full load efficiency of 84.1%, and a power density of 1390 W/in3 when stepping down a 48 V input voltage to an output voltage of 1 V. The Mini-LEGO offers compact device implementation, simple gate drive circuitry, and a fast regulation-stage switching frequency of 1.5 MHz. The 9-mm-by-9-mm, 4-phase, 20-A-per-phase vertical coupled inductor has a per-phase transient inductance of 10.3 nH, with its coupling reducing the ripple by a factor of six, and a height of 2.5 mm. This vertical coupled inductor structure is designed following a systematic approach to minimizing its height while achieving significant current ripple reduction and maintaining sufficient saturation margin. Thermal simulations are performed to verify the cooling feasibility. A measurement characterization method for vertical coupled inductor structures is introduced and used to characterize the designed vertical coupled inductor.
AB - This article presents the design and optimization of a miniaturized 48-V-to-1-V, 240-A linear-extendable group operated point-of-load (LEGO-PoL) CPU voltage regulator module (VRM) - Mini-LEGO - with a volume of 30 mm×11.2 mm × 8.4 mm. The Mini-LEGO converter provides vertical power delivery, and it achieves a peak efficiency of 87.1%, a full load efficiency of 84.1%, and a power density of 1390 W/in3 when stepping down a 48 V input voltage to an output voltage of 1 V. The Mini-LEGO offers compact device implementation, simple gate drive circuitry, and a fast regulation-stage switching frequency of 1.5 MHz. The 9-mm-by-9-mm, 4-phase, 20-A-per-phase vertical coupled inductor has a per-phase transient inductance of 10.3 nH, with its coupling reducing the ripple by a factor of six, and a height of 2.5 mm. This vertical coupled inductor structure is designed following a systematic approach to minimizing its height while achieving significant current ripple reduction and maintaining sufficient saturation margin. Thermal simulations are performed to verify the cooling feasibility. A measurement characterization method for vertical coupled inductor structures is introduced and used to characterize the designed vertical coupled inductor.
KW - Coupled inductor
KW - dc-dc power conversion
KW - point-of-load
KW - switched-capacitor (SC)
KW - vertical power delivery
KW - voltage regulator module (VRM)
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U2 - 10.1109/TPEL.2023.3337171
DO - 10.1109/TPEL.2023.3337171
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85179061735
SN - 0885-8993
VL - 39
SP - 3391
EP - 3410
JO - IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics
JF - IEEE Transactions on Power Electronics
IS - 3
ER -