Abstract
The generational scaling of CMOS device geometries, as predicted by Moore's law, has significantly outpaced advances in CMOS package and power electronics technology. The conduction of power to a high-performance integrated circuit (IC) die typically requires close to 50% of package and IC I/O and is increasing with trends towards lower supply voltages and higher power density that occur in advanced CMOS nodes. The disparity in scaling of logic, package, and I/O technology has created a significant bottleneck that has become a dominant constraint on computational performance. By performing power conversion and voltage regulation in-package, this limitation can be mitigated. Integration of thin-film ferromagnetic inductors with CMOS technology enables single-chip power converters to be co-packaged with processors, high bandwidth memory (HBM), and/or other modules. This paper highlights the advantages of fully integrated package voltage regulators (PVRs), which include: reducing package I/O allocated for power, eliminating the need for upstream power-conversion stages, and improving transient response. These benefits substantially reduce the size, weight, and power of modern electronic systems.
