Patent ID: 8237307

Claim:
A method for providing electrical voltages to N different power rails, the method comprising: receiving N target duty cycle values for N power converter circuits, each power converter circuit being configured to be able to provide a regulated voltage to a corresponding power rail, the regulated voltage provided to a power rail by a power converter circuit being determined by a target duty cycle value for each power converter circuit; determining a coarse portion of the target duty cycle value for each of the N power converter circuits by the division of each target duty cycle value by N, a coarse portion of a duty cycle value being equal to the integer portion of the quotient of a target duty cycle value and N; determining a fine portion of the target duty cycle value for each of the N power converter circuits as the remainder portion of the quotient of a target duty cycle and N; and generating voltages from the N power converter circuits by activating each of the N power converter circuits using a corresponding control pulse for each power converter circuit that is output from a single, time-shared pulse-width modulator (PWM), the single, time-shared PWM being configured to output control pulses having duty cycles equal to the sum of the respective coarse portion of a target duty cycle value and the fine portion of a target duty cycle value.