ThermoGater

Abstract

Tailoring the operating voltage to fine-grain temporal changes in the power and performance needs of the workload can effectively enhance power efficiency. Therefore, power-limited computing platforms of today widely deploy integrated (i.e., on-chip) voltage regulation which enables fast fine-grain voltage control. Voltage regulators convert and distribute power from an external energy source to the processor. Unfortunately, power conversion loss is inevitable and projected integrated regulator designs are unlikely to eliminate this loss even asymptotically. Reconfigurable power delivery by selective shut-down, i.e., gating, of distributed on-chip regulators in response to spatio-temporal changes in power demand can sustain operation at the minimum conversion loss. However, even the minimum conversion loss is sizable, and as conversion loss gets dissipated as heat, on-chip regulators can easily cause thermal emergencies due to their small footprint.