Intel Corporation
SEAMLESS NON-LINEAR VOLTAGE REGULATION CONTROL TO LINEAR CONTROL APPARATUS AND METHOD

Abstract:

A digital control scheme controls an integrator of a PID filter to implement non-linear control of saturating the duty cycle during which the proportional and derivative terms of the PID filter are set to 0 while the integrator and its internal states (previous values or memory) is set to a duty cycle that is the sum of the current nominal duty cycle plus a deltaD. The deltaD is the maximum duty cycle increment that is used to regulate a voltage regulator from ICCmin to ICCmax and is a configuration register that can be set post silicon. An FSM moves from a non-linear all ON state to an open loop duty cycle which maintains the output voltage slightly higher than the required Vref. After a certain period in this open loop, the FSM then ramps down the open loop duty cycle value until the output voltage is close to the Vref.