Power supply feed-forward compensation technique

An apparatus comprising:

• a power summation circuit to compute a power consumption hint as a sum of a plurality of weighting values associated with and indicative of a power consumption level of each of a plurality of functional blocks;
• a compensation circuit to generate a power supply adjustment signal as a function of the power consumption hint and at least one voltage sensor input.

A system comprising:

• a processor comprising a power estimation circuit to generate a power consumption estimate;
• a variable voltage supply;
• a compensation circuit coupled to provide a voltage supply adjustment signal to the variable voltage supply, the voltage supply adjustment signal being a function of the power consumption estimate, a reference voltage sampled proximate said variable voltage supply, and a load voltage sampled proximate said processor.

A method comprising:

• receiving a power consumption hint from an electronic component;
• receiving a plurality of sensor inputs from a plurality of sensor points;
• providing a power supply adjustment signal as a function of both the power consumption hint and a system transfer function derived at least in part from the plurality of sensor inputs.

A method comprising:

• summing a plurality of initial estimate power consumption weights associated with and indicative of a power consumption level of active ones of a plurality of functional units of a processor to derive a processor power estimate for the processor;
• adjusting said plurality of initial estimate power consumption weights based on processor operation.

An apparatus comprising:

• a plurality of sensor inputs;
• a voltage supply adjust signal calculation circuit, said voltage supply adjust signal calculation circuit being coupled to said plurality of sensor inputs to receive a plurality of sensor input signals and to generate as a function of said plurality of sensor input signals a voltage supply adjust signal.