Energy efficient adaptive clustering of on-chip power delivery systems

•Power efficiency of the overall heterogeneous power delivery system is optimized.•An algorithm to efficiently co-design on-chip power supplies is proposed.•The algorithm supports dynamic control and scaling in power delivery systems.•An order of magnitude speedup is exhibited as compared with exhaustive methods.•Up to a 21% increase in power efficiency is demonstrated based on the IBM benchmarks.

Efficient on-chip power delivery is a significant design challenge in heterogeneous real time systems with multiple power domains. The power efficiency of the overall heterogeneous power delivery system has recently been shown to be a strong function of the clustering of the power supplies – the specific configuration in which the power converters and regulators are co-designed. A recursive clustering algorithm with polynomial computational complexity is proposed for a dynamically controllable power distribution system. The algorithm is evaluated on IBM power grid benchmark circuits, yielding up to a 21% increase in power efficiency, and orders of magnitude speedup in runtime.