Intel’s next generation of Core processors may be less power hungry than anticipated thanks to a new feature called Digital Linear Voltage Regulator (DLVR). According to a patent published over the summer, DLVR can reduce CPU voltage by 160 mV, which translates to a 20 to 25 percent drop in CPU power consumption. A roadmap previously shared by VideoCardz seems to confirm that DLVR will be introduced with 13th Gen Intel Core “Raptor Lake” processors.
From the abstract:
A power supply architecture combines the benefits of a traditional single stage power delivery, when there are no additional power losses in the integrated VR with low VID and low CPU losses of FIVR (fully integrated voltage regulator) and D-LVR (digital linear voltage regulator). The D-LVR is not in series with the main power flow, but in parallel. By placing the digital-LVR in parallel to a primary VR (e.g., motherboard VR), the CPU VID is lowered and the processor core power consumption is lowered. The power supply architecture reduces the guard band for input power supply level, thereby reducing the overall power consumption because the motherboard VR specifications can be relaxed, saving cost and power. The power supply architecture drastically increases the CPU performance at a small extra cost for the silicon and low complexity of tuning.
Intel’s Raptor Lake chips will leverage a mix of Performance and Efficiency cores just like the current generation of Alder Lake processors. Some of the SKUs will reportedly feature up to 16 Efficiency cores, with support for faster next-generation memory such as DDR-5600.
The basic idea behind Raptor Lake's new power delivery architecture proposal is to include a digital linear voltage regulator (DLVR) as a voltage clamp placing in parallel to the primary VR, reducing CPU VID and thereby also reducing processor core power consumption. pic.twitter.com/n7kwjwTY9C
— Underfox (@Underfox3) August 19, 2021
Source: FPO (via r/intel, VideoCardz)