Patent ID: 8598946

Claim:
A method of operating a programmable charge pump comprising: configuring each of a plurality of cascaded charge pump stages to be in a first set of charge pump stages or in a second set of charge pump stages based on an indicator of a target output voltage level, the first set of charge pump stages being configured to level-shift a first voltage level to a second voltage level, each charge pump stage of the second set of charge pump stages having a disabled pump circuit portion, the second set of charge pump stages being configured to pass a version of the second voltage level to an output node of the programmable charge pump; and adjusting a pump voltage of an individual charge pump stage of the first set of charge pump stages based on a feedback signal generated by a plurality of cascaded switched-capacitor stages in response to a voltage level on the output node and the indicator of the target output voltage level, the pump voltage being a difference between an input voltage level of the individual charge pump stage and an output voltage level of the individual charge pump stage.