Intersil Corp. of Irvine, Calif., has partnered with Tempe, Ariz., startup Primarion to develop multigigahertz power-management ICs.
Intersil will license Primarion's digital power architecture to develop new power controllers for advanced Intel and AMD microprocessors, which will approach 10-GHz clocking speeds in a few years. Intersil and Primarion will also codevelop megahertz regulators and a new communications bus. Together, this will enable a new class of multigigahertz power-management ICs expected to be several orders of magnitude faster than any previous solution.
The new technology will complement existing solutions and enable digitally controlled multiphase controllers for future microprocessors. Implementations of this new architecture are expected sometime this year.
For details, go to www.intersil.com and www.primarion.com.