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US 8,788,859 B2Granted
Thermal sensitivity based clock frequency adjustment for dynamic power control of a processor
AssigneeIntel Corporation
InventorZhong-Ning (George) Cai
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A method and system provides dynamic power control based on thermal sensitivity of a processor system. The method and system includes a circuit that reduces the clock frequency for the processor system in response to thermal characteristics satisfying a pre-determined threshold that allows maximal thermal temperature limit utilization without substantially degrading processor performance.
Claims21
A processor comprising:
- a sensor to measure at least one thermal characteristic of the processor;
- and
- a circuit, responsive to the at least one thermal characteristic satisfying a threshold, to reduce a clock frequency of the processor by a variable rate, the variable rate based on hardware performance profiling of at least one hardware component coupled to the processor, the hardware performance profiling indicative of a processor speed requirement for the at least one hardware component and to have a first value to indicate that the clock frequency reduction can be aggressive and a second value to indicate that the clock frequency reduction is to be of fine granularity.
A method comprising:
- measuring at least one thermal characteristic of a processor operating according to a clock frequency;
- and
- reducing the clock frequency by a variable rate in response to the at least one thermal characteristic satisfying a threshold, the variable rate based on hardware performance profiling a of at least one hardware component coupled to the processor, the hardware performance profiling indicative of a processor speed requirement for the at least one hardware component and to have a first value to indicate that the clock frequency reduction can be aggressive and a second value to indicate that the clock frequency reduction is to be of fine granularity.
A non-transitory machine-readable medium having stored thereon instructions, which if performed by a machine cause the machine to perform a method comprising:
- measuring at least one thermal characteristic of a processor operating according to a clock frequency;
- and
- reducing the clock frequency by a variable rate in response to the at least one thermal characteristic satisfying a threshold, the variable rate based on hardware performance profiling a of at least one hardware component coupled to the processor, the hardware performance profiling indicative of a processor speed requirement for the at least one hardware component during execution of an application and to have a first value to indicate that the clock frequency reduction can be aggressive and a second value to indicate that the clock frequency reduction is to be of fine granularity.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.