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Tyndall and CEA-Leti reach major milestone in 3D integrated Power Conversion through the FAMES Pilot Line. Home news Tyndall and CEA-Leti reach major milestone in 3D integrated Power Conversion through the FAMES Pilot Line. Date Posted: 11 August 2026 Tyndall National Institute and CEA-Leti have announced a major milestone in advanced power delivery technologies with the tape-out of a Power Management Integrated Circuit (PMIC) in advanced FD-SOI technology. The PMIC will form the core of a 3D integrated DC-DC converter that combines embedded stripline inductors on a high-density capacitive interposer, designed to meet the power delivery demands of future artificial intelligence (AI), high-performance computing (HPC), and edge computing systems. Delivered through the FAMES pilot line, with Tyndall as a partner and CEA-Leti as coordinator, this achievement marks an important step forward in the development of advanced semiconductor solutions for future computing systems. The Challenge: Bringing Power Conversion Closer to the Point-of-Load (PoL) with High Efficiency As semiconductor devices continue to require higher current levels at increasingly lower voltages, interleaved interconnect paths between voltage regulators and processors generate parasitic resistance and inductance, resulting in power losses, voltage droop, and degraded transient performance. In this context, vertical power delivery has emerged as a key architectural requirement. Heterogeneous integration technologies provide a major enabling solution by bringing power conversion functions closer to the point-of-load. To address these challenges, Tyndall and CEA-Leti are collaborating on a 3D integrated DC-DC converter designed to bring power conversion directly inside advanced semiconductor packages. By placing the power conversion stage in close proximity to the ASIC load, the approach significantly shortens current paths, reduces power distribution losses and enables substantially higher power density delivery. The demonstrator combines three key technological building blocks: * High-frequency integrated stripline inductors developed by Tyndall; * A high-density capacitive silicon interposer developed by CEA-Leti; * A 3-level two-phase hybrid DC-DC converter architecture designed by CEA-Leti and fabricated in a 22nm FD-SOI CMOS technology. Together, these technologies form a compact heterogeneous power delivery platform designed for next-generation integrated systems. By integrating power conversion functions directly within the semiconductor package, the approach reduces power distribution losses, improves efficiency, and enables higher power density delivery in a significantly smaller footprint. The converter is designed to deliver output currents of up to 2 A at a regulated output voltage of 0.8 V from a 1.8 V input supply, while occupying a PMIC area of just 2.5 mm^2. Testing has demonstrated efficiency exceeding 85% across an output power range of 600 mW to 1.5 W, with peak efficiency above 86.5%. This milestone demonstrates the potential of ultra-compact power delivery systems enabled by two key FAMES technologies: high-performance integrated power inductors and high-density integrated capacitors. Together, these innovations open the door to a new generation of compact, energy-efficient power delivery solutions for advanced computing applications. Commenting on this milestone, Dr Sambuddha Khan, FAMES Programme Manager, Tyndall, said: This achievement underscores Tyndall's research leadership and innovation strengths, while further enhancing its international positioning in advanced semiconductor technologies. It also highlights the value of collaborative research and innovation within the FAMES Pilot Line. Tyndall look forward to continuing its work with CEA-Leti and its partners to advance next-generation power delivery solutions. Scientific Contributors: * Tyndall National Institute: Rayan Bajwa, Yi Dou, Rajkumar Modak, Sambuddha Khan, Cian O'Mathuna * CEA-Leti: Frederic Rothan, Aude Lefevre, Lilian Masarotto

Tyndall achieves two world-firsts in miniature photonics integration. Optically-powered devices offer new technologies for use in the human body. 01 July 2026 A chip-on-tip microcamera developed at the Tyndall National Institute. Credit: Tyndall National Institute. Researchers at Ireland's Tyndall National Institute have announced a breakthrough in optically powered miniature devices, and predict that it will be put to use in biomedical and diagnostic applications. As described in Optics Letters, the project explored how optical power delivery can enable devices to operate in remote or hard-to-access biological environments, where traditional electrical power sources are impractical and conventional photovoltaic methods are unreliable. As proof of concept, Tyndall has developed a fully optically powered, chip-on-tip micro-camera endoscope with a 3.0 millimeter outer-diameter catheter, designed for minimally invasive surgical guidance and in vivo diagnosis. The device exploits the power-over-fiber (PoF) principle, in which power is delivered optically through a multimode optical fiber and converted to electrical energy at the receiver by custom PV cells. This architecture improves biocompatibility by eliminating distal electrical conductors, and enables a new class of optically powered miniaturized biomedical devices. In the Tyndall case a 808-nanometer source coupled into a 250-micron optical fiber was packaged into two 3D-printed modules, a back-end photovoltaic power module and a front-end micro-camera module, to create an optically powered micro-camera probe. "Although PoF requires precise alignment between the optical fiber and PV cell to minimize optical losses, it benefits from the lightweight nature of optical fibers and their ability to support high-speed data transmission without electromagnetic interference," wrote the Tyndall team. "These characteristics make PoF particularly well-suited for power-intensive, miniaturized applications." New areas of exploration for intraoperative diagnostics Building on this integration breakthrough, Tyndall has also developed the first chip-on-tip fluorescence lifetime imaging (FLIM) micro-camera at an endoscopic scale, described in a further Optics Letters paper. This micro-camera has an external diameter of 4 millimeters and comprises a miniaturized 1-square-millimeter 128 x 120 SPAD array detector, integrated imaging optics and an optical fiber for excitation light delivery. Three different light sources were trialled with the device: 375 and 405 nanometer pulsed laser diodes and a pulsed supercontinuum laser. "This addresses key challenges in photonics packaging, stray light suppression, electrical interfacing and compact optical design to enable time-resolved fluorescence imaging at clinically relevant scales," wrote the team. In trials on unlabelled ex vivo sheep tissues, the new device recorded a distinct contrast in FLIM data from intestine and lung samples, with a mean lifetime of 2.7 nanoseconds for the former and 3.5 nanoseconds for the latter. Features below 30 microns in size were resolved. Bringing FLIM systems to the tip of an endoscope will open new areas of exploration for intraoperative diagnostics and surgical guidance, commented Tyndall, and this research represents a significant step in translating semiconductor and photonics research into clinically relevant technologies. "Having demonstrated fully optically powered operation in controlled environments, we are now focused on progressing towards pre-clinical and in vivo validation," commented Sanathana Konugolu Venkata Sekar, head of the FAST-BioPhotonics research group at Tyndall. "This transition is essential to proving real-world viability in complex biological environments."