Patent ID: 7733675

Claim:
A circuit for preventing inductor saturation during a step-up load transient in a multi-phase converter circuit where phases are turned ON sequentially by a shared clock signal with a fixed phase shift, each phase having high- and low-side switches series connected at a switching node, the circuit comprising: at least one closed loop connected to at least one phase for providing ripple current cancellation in input and output sides of the multi-phase converter circuit; an oscillator circuit for providing a signal to turn ON and OFF the high- and low-side switches of each of the phases of the multi-phase converter circuit; and a detection circuit to detect the transient, the detect circuit comprising: an error amplifier circuit to receive input signals from an output of the multi-phase converter to provide an error signal; and a clock oscillator frequency changing circuit receiving the error signal for increasing the clock oscillation frequency when said detection circuit detects a step-up load transient.