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US 7,412,611 B2Granted
Power management with low power processes
AssigneeHewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P.
InventorRoger Edward Tipley
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Systems, methodologies, media, and other embodiments associated with selectively regulating power consumption by a computing system are described. One exemplary method embodiment includes receiving a signal that power regulation is desired for a computing system. The exemplary method embodiment may also include selectively causing a low power process to be executed in the computing system to cause the computing system to consume less power on average than would be consumed if the low power process was not executed.
Claims20
A computer-implemented method comprising:
- receiving a signal to regulate an amount of power consumed by a computing system the amount of power being related to a set of processes associated with one or more processors in the computing system, where members of the set of processes may be executing on a processors or scheduled to execute on a processor;
- and
- in response to receiving the signal:
- selecting one or more power tempered processes to execute in the computing system along with the set of processes, and
- arranging for the one or more power tempered processes to execute in the computing system along with the set of processes such that the collective average power consumption of the set of processes and the one or more power tempered processes is less than the average power consumption of the set of processes.
2 more elements
A computer-implemented method, comprising:
- receiving a signal to regulate an amount of power consumed by a computing system, the amount of power being related to a set of processes associated with one or more processors in the computing system, where members of the set of processes may be executing on a processor or scheduled to execute on a processor, the signal comprising one or more of, an amount indicator, an urgency indicator, a threshold approach indicator, and a desired average power indicator;
- and
- in response to receiving the signal:
- selecting one or more power tempered processes to execute in the computing system along with the set of processes, and
- arranging for the one or more power tempered processes to execute in the computing system along with the set of processes, the power tempered processes being configured to cause the computing system to consume on average an amount of power below a power consumption threshold, the power tempered processes comprising one or more of an actual user level process with known power consumption attributes, an artificial user level process with known power consumption attributes, a user level process comprising a set of halt instructions, an actual system level process with known power consumption attributes, an artificial system level process with known power consumption attributes, a system level process comprising a set of halt instructions, an interrupt service routine for a non-maskable interrupt, and an interrupt service routine for a system management interrupt, a power tempered process being configurable with respect to one or more of, duration, intensity, and priority,
- where arranging for the one or more power tempered processes to execute includes one or more of, scheduling a power tempered process to execute, and generating an interrupt where an interrupt service routine associated with the interrupt is configured as a power tempered process, where scheduling a power tempered process to execute includes making a scheduling request via one or more of, an operating system scheduler, and an interrupt service routine based scheduler, and where the interrupt is one of, a non-maskable interrupt (NMI), and a system management interrupt (SMI).
3 more elements
A system, comprising:
- a signal logic configured to receive and analyze a power regulation signal;
- and
- a power logic operably connected to the signal logic, the power logic being configured to selectively control an amount of power consumed by a computing system by controlling one or more of, a number, a type, and a mixture of low power processes to execute on the computing system, the power logic also being configured to select a low power process to execute on the computing system and to enable the low power process to execute on the computing system, the low power process causing the computing system to consume less power than a power consumption threshold.
A system, comprising:
- means for automatically determining that power regulation is desired for a computing system, where the power regulation is related to a set of processes associated with one or more processors in the computing system, where members of the set of processes may be executing on a processor or scheduled to execute on a processor;
- means for selecting one or more power tempered processes to execute on the computing system along with the set of processes;
- and
- means for adding the one or more power tempered processes to a set of processes executing or scheduled to execute on the computing system, where the one or more power tempered processes will execute in the computing system along with the set of processes such that the the collective average power consumption of the set of processes and the one or more power tempered processes is less than the average power consumption of the set of processes.
1 more element
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.