Inductor Health Monitoring in PMIC Under Adaptive Phase Shifting Operation for Minimization of Power and Thermal Loss

As artificial intelligence industries such as Open AI or Chat GPT grow, data centers and servers require Enterprise Solid State Drive (ESSD) with interfaces that require more capacity and higher speed. ESSD has three main components (NAND, DRAM, SoC) which needs wide voltage ranges and the Power Management Integrated Circuit (PMIC) supplies the required voltages. During supplying the required power to each component, power loss in PMIC is inevitable, so minimizing the power loss is critical in PMIC. However, the power consumption of data centers and servers is growing bigger enough to accelerate global warming issues, so that minimizing the power loss of PMIC in ESSD has been faced with challenge. This can be achieved by applying Zero Current Detection (ZCD), Adaptive Phase Shifting (APS) operation method including Inductor Health Monitoring (IHM) technology. Compared to the conventional single-phase method, which can only optimize efficiency in specific narrow current sections, this new method can do it in multiple wide ranges. However, the difference between each phases of inductor can cause efficiency loss, and it can be overcome through IHM.