TEMPERATURE SENSING IN INTEGRATED CIRCUITS

摘要

A method and apparatus for temperature sensing in an IC. The IC (10) includes a plurality of remote temperature sensors (40) each coupled to a control logic unit (20). The plurality of remote temperature sensors may be distributed throughout the integrated circuit. The integrated circuit includes a reference unit (30) coupled to provide a reference temperature to the control logic unit and a reference sensor (35) coupled to provide a signal having a reference frequency to the control logic unit. The reference unit and the reference sensor are located near each other. The control logic unit is configured to correlate the reference frequency received from the reference sensor with the reference temperature received from the reference unit. The control logic unit is further configured to determine the temperature of each of the remote temperature sensors based on this correlation, and also configured to determine the maximum temperature of all of the temperature sensors.