The pivotal role power management IP plays in chip design

Why is power management IP so critical for chip design engineers?

By Chris Morrison, VP Product Marketing at Agile Analog
DENA (April 1, 2025)

Power management IP plays a pivotal role in chip design. It is key for achieving the energy efficiency today’s electronic devices demand, but its function extends far beyond this to maintaining high-performance, thermal efficiency, and signal integrity. That’s why chip design engineers are so keen to learn more about power management IP.

Power management IP overview

Power management IP refers to specialized blocks or circuits that help manage the power consumption, voltage levels, and energy efficiency of a system. Common components used in power management include low drop-out (LDO) linear voltage regulators, voltage references, and power-on-reset (POR) circuits. These can be combined into a dedicated power management unit (PMU) that supplies all the sub-blocks.

LDOs are generally used to provide an accurate, low noise, regulated voltage level from a power source such as a battery. This is at the expense of a minimum voltage drop (or drop-out voltage). In a standard LDO, a drop-out of 200mV is enough to filter the incoming supply for line and load regulation, generating a low noise and steady output voltage against power supply and load variations.

Voltage references are stable references used by other components within the system. These are crucial for the precise measurement and control of any analog circuit, including LDOs. The primary objective of a voltage reference is to provide a constant known value over process, voltage, and temperature (PVT) variation. Low power consumption and good power supply rejection ratio (PSRR) are essential for a reliable reference voltage. Typically, the voltage references take advantage of the inherent bandgap energy of silicon. The bandgap utilizes two voltages with opposite temperature coefficients (the base-emitter voltage and the voltage across a resistor) to produce a temperature independent reference.

Power-on-reset circuits are a vital part of many ASIC/SoC designs. They can delay the start-up of logic circuits until the power supply voltages have reached the required level to achieve valid logic states in the system. The aim is to prevent unforeseen system problems and stop sensitive elements from being damaged during power-up or power-down sequences.

Power management blocks do not usually work independently. To control the different power management blocks, a logic state machine can be added to ensure the right timing and sequencing of power supply bring-up and shut-down, as well as to establish the various low-power states.

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