Hardware Engineering · Cluster
Power and Thermals
Delivery, dissipation, and throttling.
- 01 The Power Delivery Chain from Wall Adapter to Core Rail How a processor's sub-volt, hundred-ampere supply is produced from a 12 V input, why every conversion stage loses a share, and where the losses accumulate.
- 02 Decoupling Capacitors and the Impedance of a Power Distribution Network Why a regulator cannot supply a load that changes in nanoseconds, how a network of capacitors is chosen to hold a target impedance across frequency, and where the anti-resonances come from.
- 03 Multiphase Buck Converters and Where Regulator Efficiency Goes How interleaved buck phases divide a hundred-ampere load, why ripple cancellation lets the inductors shrink, and which loss terms set the efficiency curve.
- 04 Static IR Drop and Dynamic Droop Inside the Die Power Grid Why the last hundred millivolts of a processor's supply budget is spent in on-die metal, how current transients turn grid inductance into voltage droop, and where electromigration sets the hard limit.
- 05 Junction Temperature and the Thermal Resistance Network How a die's temperature is computed from ambient through a series of thermal resistances, what each interface contributes, and why the transient curve differs from the steady-state number.
- 06 Heat Pipes and Vapor Chambers: Moving Heat by Phase Change How a sealed wick structure transports heat with a temperature drop far smaller than copper conduction, and which of the four transport limits binds first in a processor cooler.
- 07 Fan Curves, System Impedance, and Where a Cooler Actually Operates How a fan's pressure-flow curve intersects the chassis impedance curve to fix the operating point, and why the resulting airflow determines the heat sink's resistance.
- 08 Leakage Power and the Electrothermal Feedback Loop Why subthreshold and gate leakage rise exponentially with temperature, how that turns the power budget into a positive feedback loop, and where the loop stabilises or runs away.
- 09 Thermal Throttling: Duty Cycles, Ratio Capping, and Power Limits How a processor detects that it is too hot or drawing too much, which of several limiters acts first, and what each one does to frequency, voltage, and the workload's timing.
- 10 Energy-Optimal Operating Points and the Shape of DVFS Why the lowest voltage a circuit can run at is not the most efficient one, how frequency and voltage must move together, and where the energy minimum sits for a real workload.