Back to results
US 7,689,844 B2Granted
Credit-based activity regulation within a microprocessor based on an accumulative credit system
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorGeorge Chrysos
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A technique to control power consumption within a microprocessor. More particularly, embodiments of the invention relate to a technique to control power and performance within one or more microprocessors by enforcing a credit-based instruction execution rate algorithm.
Claims20
An apparatus comprising:
- a multicore processor having a plurality of cores each having a processing rate to be controlled, based at least in part, on a number of activity level credits for the core corresponding to an extent to which the core has experienced an activity level below an average allowable activity level.
A system comprising:
- a processor having a controllable power level based at least in part on an accumulative credit system in which variation in an activity level of the processor is accommodated, at least in part, based on the accumulative credit system, wherein the accumulative credit system is based on a difference between a number of issued instructions and an allowed number of issued instructions, the difference corresponding to a credit level indicative of the number of issued instructions above the allowed number of issued instructions that the processor can issue.
A method comprising:
- changing a number of issue rate credits based on an extent to which an instruction issue rate within a core of a processor varies from an average issue rate level;
- and
- spending the issue rate credits if an instruction issue rate in a cycle exceeds the average issue rate level.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.