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Multi-Core Voltage Regulators To Increase Processor Efficiency

Posted by Roblimo on from the now-we-need-multi-core-voltages-to-regulate dept.

cylonlover writes "For decades, chipmakers strove to develop the fastest and most powerful chips possible and damn the amount of electricity needed to power them, but these days raw grunt isn't the only consideration. As more and more devices go mobile and these devices become more and more powerful, chipmakers must also take the energy efficiency into account. Harvard graduate student Wonyoung Kim has developed and demonstrated an on-chip, multi-core voltage regulator (MCVR) that he says could allow the creation of 'smarter' smartphones, slimmer laptops and more energy efficient data centers by more closely matching the power supply to the demand of the chip."

3 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Intel showed the same thing 6 years ago by YesIAmAScript · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Including the same charts and graphs.

    http://www.anandtech.com/show/1770

    How this guy is going to get a patent on this stuff based upon his work in 2008 when Intel showed it onstage at IDF in 2005 is beyond me.

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    http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
  2. Distribution by MichaelSmith · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So this is a way for an ALU (say) to send a message to to the MCVR saying "we need ten trillion electrons" when it is asked to a floating point multiplication, then the electrons get parcelled out and the ALU shuts down when the job is done. Sounds reasonable but there is still going to be a voltage regulator off the chip. This is more like an intelligent distribution system.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
  3. SmartReflex? by queazocotal · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Sounds similar to SmartReflex (tm) which is shipping on millions of phones.
    http://focus.ti.com/general/docs/wtbu/wtbugencontent.tsp?templateId=6123&navigationId=12032&contentId=4609&DCMP=WTBU&HQS=ProductBulletin+PR+smartreflex

    Where it differs is that there is an on-chip regulator to do the dynamic scaling.
    The TI solution has a couple of regulators on-chip, with a couple of output voltages, as well as a more variable external solution.

    The above device has variable regulators on-chip. (for annoying technical reasons, these are linear regulators, not switching,
    so if they regulate to 50% output - half the (reduced amount of power needed) is wasted as heat.