The world's first integrated voltage regulators can be located on the bottom of a 3-D chip stack, according researchers at IBM and Columbia University, who recently demonstrated a silicon interposer containing the necessary magnetic inductors at the International Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in work funded by Semiconductor Research Corp. (SRC) and the U.S. Department of Energy.

By locating the magnetic inductors on the bottom of a 3-D chip stack, the demonstration showed how a voltage regulator's ordinarily bulky discrete components can be integrated into an otherwise CMOS design flow.  Although the through-silicon-vias (TSVs) and other voltage regulator components were absent, the proof-of-concept demonstration shows how voltage regulators on silicon interposers can be integrated into future 3-D chip stacks.

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2.5D interposer with integrated power inductors