Rainbow Electronics MAX17409 User Manual
Page 27
MAX17409
1-Phase Quick-PWM GPU Controller
______________________________________________________________________________________
27
where:
where R
SENSE
is the sensing resistor and R
CSP-CSN
/
R
LX-CSN
is the ratio of resistor-divider with DCR-sensing
approach.
Voltage Positioning and
Loop Compensation
Voltage positioning dynamically lowers the output volt-
age in response to the load current, reducing the out-
put capacitance and processor’s power dissipation
requirements. The controller uses a transconductance
amplifier to set the transient and DC output voltage
droop (Figure 2) as a function of the load. This adjusta-
bility allows flexibility in the selected current-sense
resistor value or inductor DCR, and allows smaller cur-
rent-sense resistance to be used, reducing the overall
power dissipated.
Steady-State Voltage Positioning
Connect a resistor (R
FB
) between FB and V
OUT
to set
the DC steady-state droop (load line) based on the
required voltage positioning slope (R
DROOP
):
where the effective current-sense resistance (R
SENSE
)
depends on the current-sense method (see the
Current
Sense
section), and the voltage-positioning amplifier’s
transconductance (G
m(FB)
) is typically 600µS as
defined in the
Electrical Characteristics
table. When the
inductors’ DCR is used as the current-sense element
(R
SENSE
= R
DCR
), each current-sense input should
include an NTC thermistor to minimize the temperature
dependence of the voltage-positioning slope.
Output Capacitor Selection
The output filter capacitor must have low enough effec-
tive equivalent series resistance (ESR) to meet output
ripple and load-transient requirements, yet have high
enough ESR to satisfy stability requirements.
In processor core supplies and other applications where
the output is subject to large load transients, the output
capacitor’s size typically depends on how much ESR is
needed to prevent the output from dipping too low under a
load transient. Ignoring the sag due to finite capacitance:
In nonprocessor applications, the output capacitor’s
size often depends on how much ESR is needed to
maintain an acceptable level of output ripple voltage.
The output ripple voltage of a step-down controller
equals the total inductor ripple current multiplied by the
output capacitor’s ESR. The maximum ESR to meet rip-
ple requirements is:
where f
SW
is the switching frequency. The actual
capacitance value required relates to the physical size
needed to achieve low ESR, as well as to the chemistry
of the capacitor technology. Thus, the capacitor is usu-
ally selected by ESR and voltage rating rather than by
capacitance value (this is true of polymer types).
When using low-capacity ceramic filter capacitors,
capacitor size is usually determined by the capacity
needed to prevent V
SAG
and V
SOAR
from causing
problems during load transients. Generally, once
enough capacitance is added to meet the overshoot
requirement, undershoot at the rising load edge is no
longer a problem (see the V
SAG
and V
SOAR
equations
in the
Transient Response
section).
Output Capacitor Stability Considerations
For Quick-PWM controllers, stability is determined by
the value of the ESR zero relative to the switching fre-
quency. The boundary of instability is given by the fol-
lowing equation:
where:
and:
where C
OUT
is the total output capacitance, R
ESR
is the
total ESR, R
SENSE
is the current-sense resistance (R
CM
= R
CS
), R
DROOP(AC)
is the AC component of the droop,
and R
PCB
is the parasitic board resistance between the
output capacitors and sense resistors.
R
R
R
R
EFF
ESR
DROOP AC
PCB
=
+
+
(
)
f
R
C
ESR
EFF
OUT
=
1
2
π
f
f
ESR
SW
≤
π
R
V f
L
V
V
V
V
ESR
IN SW
IN
OUT
OUT
RIPPLE
≤
(
)
⎡
⎣
⎢
⎢
⎤
⎦
⎥
⎥
-
R
R
V
I
ESR
PCB
STEP
LOAD MAX
+
(
)
≤
∆
(
)
R
R
R
G
FB
DROOP
SENSE m FB
=
(
)
I
V
R
V
DCR
R
R
VALLEY
LIMIT
SENSE
LIMIT
CSP CSN
LX
=
=
×
-
-C
CSN