A Novel Configurable Multi Rail Power for Wafer Scale System

We propose in this paper a novel configurable multi-power-rail pad that combines power supply support circuits and a digital input/output (I/O) buffers designed for a wafer-scale system. This wafer-scale platform includes a reconfigurable wafer-scale circuit, the wafer IC, comprising an alignment-insensitive surface that can be configured to interconnect any digital components manually deposited on its surface. The proposed multi –power-rail pad minimizes power losses and heat dissipation within the circuit. The pad that is fed from two distinct voltage sources providing power at 1.8 and 3.3V has been implemented and tested. This pad has two merged configurable control loops that can select the power source. Merging takes place through shared transistors. The dual supply pad embeds a voltage regulator that achieves a fast response time of 21.1ns and that can operate over a wide range of configurable regulated output voltage, from 500mV up to 2.955V.This regulator is capable of providing a maximum output current of 40mA while needing only a very small quiescent current of 126μA.The regulator’s power supply noise rejection ranges from-25 down to-40dB for frequencies ranging from 1KHz up to 1MHz. The embedded digital I/O pad shares a common output with the power distribution and can be configured from 0.5 up to 3.3V for a maximum speed of 250MHz