Phase Doubler for high power voltage regulators

As the power consumption of microprocessors increases, a high phase count voltage regulator is required to meet the power hunger (> 180 A) and high efficiency requirements. In general, the higher the phase number count, the more PWM outputs and current sensing inputs are required for the PWM controller. Developing a very high phase count PWM controller becomes very challenging and requires a high pin count package, resulting in high cost and complex layout design. In this paper, a Phase Doubler, using a single PWM input to drive two interleaved phases, is proposed to overcome these problems. The Phase Doubler can be further expanded to quadruple the phase count, i.e, control 4 phases with only a single PWM input. Some experimental data of a 12-phase voltage regulator are included to verify the concept.