Voltage droop monitoring circuits, system-on chips and methods of operating the system-on chips
AssigneeSamsung Electronics Co., Ltd.
InventorsYong-Hwan Kim, Wook Kim, In-Sub Shin
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Abstract
In one embodiment, the voltage droop monitoring circuit includes a ring oscillator circuit block configured to generate a plurality of oscillation signals and configured to output a selected oscillation signal from one of the plurality of oscillation signals based on a first control signal. The first control signal is based on a power supply voltage of a functional circuit block. The voltage droop monitoring circuit further includes a counter configured to generate a count value based on the selected oscillation signal, and a droop detector configured detect droop in the power supply voltage of the functional circuit block based on the count value and at least one threshold value.
Claims17
A voltage droop monitoring circuit, comprising:
- a ring oscillator circuit block configured to generate a plurality of oscillation signals, configured to select an oscillation signal from the plurality of oscillation signals based on a first control signal, the first control signal based on a power supply voltage of a functional circuit block, and configured to output the selected oscillation signal;
- a counter configured to receive the selected oscillation signal from the ring oscillator circuit block and count the selected oscillation signal to generate a count value;
- and
- a droop detector configured to detect droop in the power supply voltage of the functional circuit block based on the count value and at least first and second threshold values, such that a greater level of droop is detected in response to the count value falling below the first threshold value than the second threshold value,
- wherein the droop detector is configured to detect droop in the power supply voltage in response to the count value falling below the first threshold value, and
- the droop detector is configured to detect an end of droop in the power supply voltage in response to the count value exceeding the second threshold value, the second threshold value being greater than the first threshold value.
A system-on chip, comprising:
- a voltage droop monitoring circuit configured to monitor droop in a power supply voltage of a functional circuit block, and generate an error signal based on the monitoring;
- and
- a clock modulation circuit configured to modulate an input clock signal based on the error signal to generate an adaptive clock signal, and configured to output the adaptive clock signal to the functional circuit block,
- wherein the clock modulation circuit is configured such that, in response to the error signal indicating an end of droop in the power supply voltage, the clock modulation circuit incrementally increases a frequency of the adaptive clock signal until the frequency of the adaptive clock signal reaches a pre-droop frequency, the pre-droop frequency being a frequency of the input clock signal prior to the modulation of the input clock signal, the incremental increasing of the frequency of the adaptive clock signal including periodically increasing the frequency of the adaptive clock signal such that the frequency of the adaptive clock signal is increased a plurality of times before reaching the pre-droop frequency,
- wherein the voltage droop monitoring circuit is configured to
- activate the error signal in response to a count value falling below a first threshold value, and
- deactivate the error signal in response to the count value rising above a second threshold value,
- the second threshold value being greater than the first threshold value.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.