N. Sturcken, M. Petracca, S. Warren, L. P. Carloni, A. V. Peterchev, and K. L. Shepard “An Integrated Four-Phase Buck Converter Delivering 1A/mm2 with 700ps Controller Delay and Network-on-Chip Load in 45-nm SOI” IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, 2011.

We present a four-phase integrated buck converter in 45nm SOI technology. The controller uses unlatched pulse-width modulation (PWM) with nonlinear gain to provide both stable small-signal dynamics and fast response (~700ps) to large input and output transients. This fast control approach reduces the required output capacitance by 5X in comparison to a controller with latched PWM at similar operating point. The converter switches at 80MHz and delivers 1A/mm2 at 83% efficiency and 0.66 conversion ratio.