Abstract
When there is an impending heavy workload under low battery conditions, mobile device such as smartphones can autonomously reset or even shut down to prevent damage caused by sudden voltage drops. Recently, the occurrence probability of sudden voltage drop under low battery conditions has increased with the use of high-performance 64-bit CPU cores, which adversely affects the user experiences. To overcome this problem, we propose a cost-effective sudden-voltage-drop protection (SVDP) technique to minimize unstable states, thus enhancing customer satisfaction. Programmable low-battery-state-aware logic for sudden voltage drop detection and performance tuning to maintain system stability via clock frequency control is incorporated in power management integrated circuit (PMIC) and application processor (AP). Experimental results show that the proposed technique significantly reduces the failure rate due to sudden voltage drops under low battery conditions.
