Deterministic power-estimation for thermal control
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorsDoron Orenstien, Ronny Ronen
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A system is described that includes a microprocessor and a thermal control subsystem. The microprocessor includes execution resources to support processing of instructions and consumes power. The microprocessor also includes at least one throttling mechanism to reduce the amount of heat generated by the microprocessor. The thermal control subsystem is configured to estimate an amount of power used by the microprocessor and to control the throttling mechanism based on the estimated amount of current power usage to ensure that junction temperature will not exceed the maximum allowed temperature.
Claims25
A microprocessor comprising:
- at least one throttling mechanism;
- and
- a thermal control subsystem to estimate an amount of power used by said microprocessor and to control said at least one throttling mechanism based on said estimated power usage.
A method comprising:
- estimating an amount of power used by a microprocessor;
- and
- controlling at least one throttling mechanism incorporated in the microprocessor based on said estimated power usage.
A thermal control system comprising:
- a power usage estimator to estimate an amount of power used by a microprocessor based on the number of occurrences of at least one activity performed by the microprocessor during a defined time period;
- and
- a throttling control unit to control at least one throttling mechanism incorporated in the microprocessor based on the estimated amount of power used by the microprocessor.
A machine-readable medium that provides instructions, which when executed by a microprocessor cause said microprocessor to perform operations comprising:
- estimating an amount of power used by a microprocessor;
- and
- controlling at least one throttling mechanism incorporated in the microprocessor based on said estimated power usage.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.