Controlling average power limits of a processor
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsTessil Thomas, Lokesh Sharma, Buck Gremel, Ian Steiner
Life of this patent
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Abstract
In one embodiment, a processor includes at least one core to execute instructions, one or more thermal sensors associated with the at least one core, and a power controller coupled to the at least one core. The power controller has a control logic to receive temperature information regarding the processor and dynamically determine a maximum allowable average power limit based at least in part on the temperature information. The control logic may further maintain a static maximum base operating frequency of the processor regardless of a value of the temperature information. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
Claims20
A processor comprising:
- at least one core to execute instructions;
- one or more thermal sensors associated with the at least one core to provide temperature information;
- and
- a power controller coupled to the at least one core, the power controller having a control logic to receive a customer request for a power limit, and in response to a determination that the power limit request is greater than a static value of a maximum allowable average power limit stored in a configuration storage of the processor, dynamically determine a dynamic maximum allowable average power limit based at least in part on the temperature information, the dynamic maximum allowable average power limit greater than the static value of the maximum allowable average power limit, wherein the control logic is to index into a table to obtain a power limit scaling value based on a range value obtained with the thermal information, and dynamically calculate the dynamic maximum allowable average power limit using the static value of the maximum allowable average power limit and the power limit scaling value, the power controller to control one or more operating parameters of the processor based at least in part on a power budget determined using the dynamic maximum allowable average power limit.
A non-transitory machine-readable medium having stored thereon instructions, which if performed by a machine cause the machine to perform a method comprising:
- receiving thermal information of a processor;
- mapping the thermal information to a range of a plurality of ranges;
- based on the range, accessing a table to obtain a power limit scaling factor;
- dynamically adjusting a thermal design power (TDP) value of the processor comprising a maximum allowable average power limit from a configured TDP value to an adjusted TDP value based on the power limit scaling factor, the adjusted TDP value greater than the configured TDP value when the thermal information is less than a thermal threshold;
- determining a power budget for the processor using the adjusted TDP value;
- and
- controlling one or more operating parameters for the processor based at least in part on the power budget.
A system comprising:
- a system on chip (SoC) comprising at least one core to execute instructions, one or more thermal sensors associated with the at least one core to provide temperature information, and a power controller coupled to the at least one core, the power controller to receive a customer request for a power limit, and in response to a determination that the power limit request is greater than a static value of a maximum allowable average power limit stored in a configuration storage, dynamically determine a dynamic maximum allowable average power limit based at least in part on the temperature information, the dynamic maximum allowable average power limit greater than the static value of the maximum allowable average power limit, wherein the power controller is to index into a table based on a range value obtained with the temperature information to obtain a power limit scaling value, and dynamically calculate the dynamic maximum allowable average power limit using the static value of the maximum allowable average power limit and the power limit scaling value, the power controller to control one or more operating parameters of the SoC based at least in part on a power budget determined using the dynamic maximum allowable average power limit;
- and
- a dynamic random access memory (DRAM) coupled to the SoC.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.