AUTONOMOUS THERMAL CONTROLLER FOR POWER MANAGEMENT IC

Techniques for autonomous thermal management of a power-management integrated circuit (PMIC). In an exemplary embodiment, an embedded microcontroller is provided on the PMIC to store instructions for implementing a thermal controller. The thermal controller may manage in real-time the current scaling factors of a plurality of modules coupled to corresponding off-chip power entities. The thermal controller may include registers that are programmable by an off-chip entity such as a microprocessor to specify parameters such as module priorities and a minimum current scaling factor for each module. Power entities that may be controlled by the autonomous thermal controller include, e.g., a battery charger, and/or one or more user-interface entities such as a back light display driver, a flash LED driver, or an audio amplifier.