System, apparatus and method for sensor-driven and heuristic-based minimum energy point tracking in a processor
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsSriram R. Vangal, Jayanth Mallanayakanahalli Devaraju, Vivek De, Robert Milstrey, Stephen H. Gunther
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Abstract
In one embodiment, a processor includes a minimum energy point (MEP) controller to: generate a change in thermal tracking information, based at least in part on prior and current thermal information; generate a change in activity tracking information, based at least in part on prior activity information and current activity information; and determine a MEP performance state based at least in part on the change in thermal tracking information and the change in activity tracking information. Other embodiments are described and claimed.
Claims20
A processor comprising:
- at least one core to execute instructions;
- at least one temperature sensor to output thermal information regarding the processor;
- an activity monitor to monitor activity of the processor and to output activity information based at least in part thereon;
- and
- a minimum energy point (MEP) controller coupled to the at least one temperature sensor and the activity monitor, the MEP controller to:
- generate a change in thermal tracking information, based at least in part on prior thermal information and the thermal information;
- generate a change in activity tracking information, based at least in part on prior activity information and the activity information;
- and
- determine a MEP performance state based at least in part on the change in thermal tracking information and the change in activity tracking information.
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, in a minimum energy point (MEP) controller of a processor, thermal tracking information regarding a temperature of the processor and activity tracking information regarding activity of the processor;
- generating a change in tracking information, based at least in part on the thermal tracking information and the activity tracking information;
- computing a step value based at least in part on the change in tracking information;
- and
- outputting a MEP performance state using the step value.
A system comprising:
- a processor comprising:
- a plurality of cores;
- at least one sensor to output thermal information regarding the processor;
- at least one process sensor to output process variation information regarding the processor;
- an activity monitor to monitor activity of the processor and to output activity information based at least in part thereon;
- and
- a minimum energy point (MEP) controller coupled to the at least one sensor, the at least one process sensor and the activity monitor, wherein the MEP controller is to determine an initial MEP operating point based on a sweep of voltage/frequency values and the process variation information, and thereafter to adjust the initial MEP operating point to an updated MEP operating point based at least in part on the thermal information and the activity information and without the sweep of voltage/frequency values;
- and
- a dynamic random access memory coupled to the processor.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.