Digital control enables multiphase power

Intersil reckons it has developed the industry's most advanced digital multiphase power control ICs and development platform.

Intersil reckons it has developed the industry's most advanced digital multiphase power (DMP) control ICs and development platform.

This new ISL6590 and ISL6580 digital multiphase power ICs are designed to meet the strictest power demands of new and future-generation multigigahertz CPUs that operate at very low voltage and high current.

The initial application for this advanced technology is for high-end servers, especially with a 1U form factor, but will soon broaden to other servers and workstations.

"Digital multiphase is a revolutionary development in power conversion technology", said Cindy Drapcho, Vice President of Intersil's Desktop and Server Power Products.

"It offers the advantages of digital control with optimally partitioned power stages results in the highest-performing power solution for leading-edge CPUs".

As the CPU core voltage continues to decrease, with commensurate increases in current, designers will be faced with ever-increasing power control challenges.

One such challenge will be to control point-of-load core supply voltage variations often referred to as overshoots, undershoots, droop and noise.

The lower the core voltage becomes, the more serious this problem becomes.

It means that the power control system will have to provide extreme accuracy and stability.

Related to the voltage stability challenge is the ability of the power control system to deliver high current on demand as the microprocessor changes states.

Conventional power control solutions will eventually find it impossible to meet these sudden changes in load with grace and the required precision to avoid system upsets.

The two primary control modes are staggered-phase for steady-state operation and in-phase, also known as active transient response (ATR) mode, to meet transient-state current demand.

Digital control enables instant event-based mode change - a flexibility that is not available in the analogue world.

Intersil's digital multiphase power solution a fully programmable architecture easily accessed via the Primarion PowerCode interface, a user-friendly software tool that enables the designer to change the personality of the ISL6590 digital controller IC to meet requirements of the CPU and application.

It is not a fixed ASIC solution that quickly stagnates with CPU variations or advancements due to Moore's law.

This allows the entire solution to be optimised for parameters such as loop response, number of phases, phase frequency, input voltage, maximum load and passive filter component characteristics.

In addition to rapid optimisation, the software enables diagnosis of system performance.

Data generated by the software can be ported to PSpice or Matlab simulators for more detailed analysis.

The entire solution is reusable and scaleable across multiple computing platforms, offering significant savings in both time and costs.

Intersil is the sole licensee of the PowerCode software.

Intersil's digital multiphase power control evaluation and development kit is available now.

The kit includes the ISL6590 digital multiphase controller IC that drives six ISL6580 integrated power stage ICs on a plug-in VRM10-form-factor module.

The voltage regulator module plugs into an included test platform that provides loading and hardware interface to a PC running the supplied user-friendly PowerCode software.

The software GUI makes it easy for seasoned analogue design engineers to immediately take control of familiar parameters to quickly optimise performance.

Datasheets and application notes are provided, and the entire solution is fully supported by Intersil's factory applications engineers and worldwide network of field applications engineers.

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