Control apparatus and method

A control method, comprising:

• determining whether or not a memory block including an access destination of a memory request received from a processing unit among a plurality of memory blocks is in an energy-saving state, wherein power control is carried out for each of the plurality of memory blocks;
• upon detection that the memory block including the access destination of the memory request is in the energy-saving state, incrementing the number of times which is associated with an identifier of a requesting source thread of the memory request and is stored in a first data storage unit that stores, for each of a plurality of threads of a program, an identifier of the thread in association with the number of times that access by the thread to a memory block that is in the energy-saving state is requested;
• determining whether or not the number of times after the incrementing exceeds a predetermined threshold;
• upon detection that the number of times after the incrementing exceeds the predetermined threshold, setting data representing that transition to the energy-saving state is prohibited, for the memory block including the access destination of the memory request in a second data storage unit storing data representing whether or not the transition to the energy-saving state is prohibited, for each of the plurality of memory blocks.