Patent application number | Description | Published |
20090172284 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR MONITOR AND MWAIT IN A DISTRIBUTED CACHE ARCHITECTURE - A method and apparatus for monitor and mwait in a distributed cache architecture is disclosed. One embodiment includes an execution thread sending a MONITOR request for an address to a portion of a distributed cache that stores the data corresponding to that address. At the distributed cache portion the MONITOR request and an associated speculative state is recorded locally for the execution thread. The execution thread then issues an MWAIT instruction for the address. At the distributed cache portion the MWAIT and an associated wait-to-trigger state are recorded for the execution thread. When a write request matching the address is received at the distributed cache portion, a monitor-wake event is then sent to the execution thread and the associated monitor state at the distributed cache portion for that execution thread can be reset to idle. | 07-02-2009 |
20090172375 | Operating Point Management in Multi-Core Architectures - Systems and methods of managing operating points provide for determining the number of active cores in a plurality of processor cores. A maximum operating point is selected for at least one of the active cores based on the number of active cores. In one embodiment, the number of active cores is determined by monitoring an ACPI processor power state signal of each of the plurality of cores. | 07-02-2009 |
20090172423 | METHOD, SYSTEM, AND APPARATUS FOR REROUTING INTERRUPTS IN A MULTI-CORE PROCESSOR - A method, system, and apparatus may route an interrupt to a first core of a plurality of cores of a multi-core system. If the first core is in an idle or low power state, or operating in a power state at or below a threshold power state, a core in a least idle state may be found. The interrupt may be rerouted to and processed by the core in the least idle state. Cores in a multi-core system may be rated based on for example, power states or other characteristics, and interrupts may be assigned based on these ratings. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 07-02-2009 |
20090193274 | System And Method of Coherent Data Transfer During Processor Idle States - Systems and methods of managing power provide for placing a processor in a non-snoopable state, where the processor is associated with a system memory. One or more data transfers between a controller and the system memory can be serviced while the processor is in the non-snoopable state. In one embodiment, it is determined that the processor has flushed an internal cache of the processor to the system memory before placing the processor in the non-snoopable state. | 07-30-2009 |
20100146314 | Power aware software pipelining for hardware accelerators - Forming a plurality of pipeline orderings, each pipeline ordering comprising one of a sequential, a parallel, or a sequential and parallel combination of a plurality of stages of a pipeline, analyzing the plurality of pipeline orderings to determine a total power of each of the orderings, and selecting one of the plurality of pipeline orderings based on the determined total power of each of the plurality of pipeline orderings. | 06-10-2010 |
20110099397 | OPERATING POINT MANAGEMENT IN MULTI-CORE ARCHITECTURES - For one disclosed embodiment, a processor comprises a plurality of processor cores to operate at variable performance levels. One of the plurality of processor cores may operate at a performance level different than a performance level at which another one of the plurality of processor cores may operate. Logic of the processor is to monitor activity of one or more of the plurality of processor cores. Logic of the processor is to constrain power of one or more of the plurality of processor cores based at least in part on the monitored activity. Other embodiments are also disclosed. | 04-28-2011 |
20110252267 | POWER MANAGEMENT COORDINATION IN MULTI-CORE PROCESSORS - Systems and methods of managing power provide for issuing a first operating requirement from a first processor core and issuing a second operating requirement from a second processor core. In one embodiment, the operating requirements can reflect either a power policy or a performance policy, depending upon the factor that is currently most important to software. Hardware coordination logic is used to coordinate a shared resource setting with the operating requirements. The hardware coordination logic is also able to coordinate the shared resource setting with independent resource settings of the first and second processor cores based on the operating requirements. | 10-13-2011 |
20120079304 | PACKAGE LEVEL POWER STATE OPTIMIZATION - Methods and apparatus to optimize package level power state usage are described. In one embodiment, a processor control logic receives a request to enter a lower power consumption state (such as a package level deeper sleep state). The control logic determines the time difference or delta between a last entry into the lower power consumption state and the current time. The control logic then causes the flushing of a last level cache based on a comparison of the time difference and a threshold value corresponding to the lower power consumption state. Other embodiments are also claimed and disclosed. | 03-29-2012 |
20120166852 | METHOD, APPARATUS, AND SYSTEM FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ENERGY CONSERVATION INCLUDING IMPROVED PROCESSOR CORE DEEP POWER DOWN EXIT LATENCY BY USING REGISTER SECONDARY UNINTERRUPTED POWER SUPPLY - Embodiments of the invention relate to improving exit latency from computing device processor core deep power down. Processor state data may be maintained during deep power down mode by providing a secondary uninterrupted voltage supply to always on keeper circuits that reside within critical state registers of the processor. When these registers receive a control signal indicating that the processor power state is going to be reduced from an active processor power state to a zero processor power state, they write critical state data from the critical state register latches to the keeper circuits that are supplied with the uninterrupted power. Then, when a register receives a control signal indicating that a processor power state of the processor is going to be increased back to an active processor power state, the critical state data stored in the keeper circuits is written back to the critical state register latches. | 06-28-2012 |
20120166854 | Controlling Current Transients In A Processor - In one embodiment, a processor includes a core with a front end unit, at least one execution unit, and a back end unit. Multiple voltage drop detectors can be located within the core each to output a voltage drop signal when a detected voltage falls below a threshold voltage. In turn, a current transient logic coupled to receive the voltage drop signals can control a micro-architectural parameter of at least one of the front end unit, execution unit and back end unit responsive to receipt of a voltage drop signal. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 06-28-2012 |
20120185709 | METHOD, APPARATUS, AND SYSTEM FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ENERGY CONSERVATION INCLUDING THREAD CONSOLIDATION - An apparatus, method and system is described herein for thread consolidation. Current processor utilization is determined. And consolidation opportunities are identified from the processor utilization and other exaction parameters, such as estimating a new utilization after consolidation, determining if power savings would occur based on the new utilization, and performing migration/consolidation of threads to a subset of active processing elements. Once the consolidation is performed, the non-subset processing elements that are now idle are powered down to save energy and provide an energy efficient execution environment. | 07-19-2012 |
20120191995 | METHOD, APPARATUS, AND SYSTEM FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ENERGY CONSERVATION INCLUDING OPTIMIZING C-STATE SELECTION UNDER VARIABLE WAKEUP RATES - A processor may include power management techniques to, dynamically, chose an optimal C-state for the processing core. The measurement of real workloads on the OSes exhibit two important observations (1) the bursts of high interrupt rate are interspersed between the low interrupt rate periods and long periods of high activity levels; and (2) the interrupt rate may, suddenly, fall below an interrupt rate (of 1 milli-second, for example) that is typical of the current operating systems (OS). Instead of determining the C-state based on the stale data stored in the counters, the power control logic may determine an optimal C-state by overriding the C-state determined by the OS or any other power monitoring logic. The power control logic may, dynamically, determine an optimal C-state based on the CPU idle residency times and variable rate wakeup events to match the expected wakeup event rate. | 07-26-2012 |
20120204042 | User Level Control Of Power Management Policies - In one embodiment, the present invention includes a processor having a core and a power controller to control power management features of the processor. The power controller can receive an energy performance bias (EPB) value from the core and access a power-performance tuning table based on the value. Using information from the table, at least one setting of a power management feature can be updated. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 08-09-2012 |
20120254643 | Managing Power Consumption In A Multi-Core Processor - A processor may include a core and an uncore area. The power consumed by the core area may be controlled by controlling the Cdyn of the processor such that the Cdyn is within an allowable Cdyn value irrespective of the application being processed by the core area. The power management technique includes measuring digital activity factor (DAF), monitoring architectural and data activity levels, and controlling power consumption by throttling the instructions based on the activity levels. As a result of throttling the instructions, throttling may be implemented in 3 | 10-04-2012 |
20130013945 | METHOD AND APPARATUS FOR A ZERO VOLTAGE PROCESSOR SLEEP STATE - Embodiments of the invention relate to a method and apparatus for a zero voltage processor sleep state. A processor may include a dedicated cache memory. A voltage regulator may be coupled to the processor to provide an operating voltage to the processor. During a transition to a zero voltage power management state for the processor, the operational voltage applied to the processor by the voltage regulator may be reduced to approximately zero and the state variables associated with the processor may be saved to the dedicated cache memory. | 01-10-2013 |
20130036317 | Device, System And Method Of Generating An Execution Instruction Based On A Memory-Access Instruction - Embodiments of the present invention provide an apparatus, system, and method of generating an execution instruction. Some demonstrative embodiments my include generating an execution instruction of a predetermined executable format based on memory address data of a memory-access instruction representing a memory address. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 02-07-2013 |
20130080803 | Estimating Temperature Of A Processor Core In A Low Power State - In one embodiment, the present invention includes a method for determining if a core of a multicore processor is in a low power state, and if so, estimating a temperature of the core and storing the estimated temperature in a thermal storage area for the first core. By use of this estimated temperature, an appropriate voltage at which to operate the core when it exits the low power state can be determined. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 03-28-2013 |
20130097437 | METHOD, APPARATUS, AND SYSTEM FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ENERGY CONSERVATION INCLUDING OPTIMIZING C-STATE SELECTION UNDER VARIABLE WAKEUP RATES - A processor may include power management techniques to, dynamically, chose an optimal C-state for the processing core. The measurement of real workloads on the OSes exhibit two important observations (1) the bursts of high interrupt rate are interspersed between the low interrupt rate periods and long periods of high activity levels; and (2) the interrupt rate may, suddenly, fall below an interrupt rate (of 1 milli-second, for example) that is typical of the current operating systems (OS). Instead of determining the C-state based on the stale data stored in the counters, the power control logic may determine an optimal C-state by overriding the C-state determined by the OS or any other power monitoring logic. The power control logic may, dynamically, determine an optimal C-state based on the CPU idle residency times and variable rate wakeup events to match the expected wakeup event rate. | 04-18-2013 |
20130111121 | Dynamically Controlling Cache Size To Maximize Energy Efficiency | 05-02-2013 |
20130173946 | CONTROLLING POWER CONSUMPTION THROUGH MULTIPLE POWER LIMITS OVER MULTIPLE TIME INTERVALS - Methods and apparatus relating to controlling power consumption through multiple power limits over multiple time intervals are described. In one embodiment, the level of power consumption by a computing device component (e.g., a processor or one of its processor cores) is modified based on a determined power limit value. The power limit value may be determined based on rolling power consumption averages over multiple time intervals and their comparison against multiple corresponding power limits. Other embodiments are also disclosed and claimed. | 07-04-2013 |
20130179706 | User Level Control Of Power Management Policies - In one embodiment, the present invention includes a processor having a core and a power controller to control power management features of the processor. The power controller can receive an energy performance bias (EPB) value from the core and access a power-performance tuning table based on the value. Using information from the table, at least one setting of a power management feature can be updated. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 07-11-2013 |
20130232368 | MANAGING POWER CONSUMPTION IN A MULTI-CORE PROCESSOR - A processor may include a core and an uncore area. The power consumed by the core area may be controlled by controlling the Cdyn of the processor such that the Cdyn is within an allowable Cdyn value irrespective of the application being processed by the core area. The power management technique includes measuring digital activity factor (DAF), monitoring architectural and data activity levels, and controlling power consumption by throttling the instructions based on the activity levels. As a result of throttling the instructions, throttling may be implemented in 3 | 09-05-2013 |
20130268742 | CORE SWITCHING ACCELERATION IN ASYMMETRIC MULTIPROCESSOR SYSTEM - An asymmetric multiprocessor system (ASMP) may comprise computational cores implementing different instruction set architectures and having different power requirements. Program code executing on the ASMP is analyzed by a binary analysis unit to determine what functions are called by the program code and select which of the cores are to execute the program code, or a code segment thereof. Selection may be made to provide for native execution of the program code, to minimize power consumption, and so forth. Control operations based on this selection may then be inserted into the program code, forming instrumented program code. The instrumented program code is then executed by the ASMP. | 10-10-2013 |
20140006758 | Extension of CPU Context-State Management for Micro-Architecture State | 01-02-2014 |
20140019723 | BINARY TRANSLATION IN ASYMMETRIC MULTIPROCESSOR SYSTEM - An asymmetric multiprocessor system (ASMP) may comprise computational cores implementing different instruction set architectures and having different power requirements. Program code for execution on the ASMP is analyzed and a determination is made as to whether to allow the program code, or a code segment thereof to execute on a first core natively or to use binary translation on the code and execute the translated code on a second core which consumes less power than the first core during execution. | 01-16-2014 |
20140068302 | MECHANISM FOR FACILITATING FASTER SUSPEND/RESUME OPERATIONS IN COMPUTING SYSTEMS - A mechanism is described for facilitating faster suspend/resume operations in computing systems according to one embodiment of the invention. A method of embodiments of the invention includes initiating an entrance process into a first sleep state in response to a sleep call at a computing system, transforming from the first sleep state to a second sleep state. The transforming may include preserving at least a portion of processor context at a local memory associated with one or more processor cores of a processor at the computing system. The method may further include entering the second sleep state. | 03-06-2014 |
20140082630 | PROVIDING AN ASYMMETRIC MULTICORE PROCESSOR SYSTEM TRANSPARENTLY TO AN OPERATING SYSTEM - In one embodiment, the present invention includes a multicore processor with first and second groups of cores. The second group can be of a different instruction set architecture (ISA) than the first group or of the same ISA set but having different power and performance support level, and is transparent to an operating system (OS). The processor further includes a migration unit that handles migration requests for a number of different scenarios and causes a context switch to dynamically migrate a process from the second core to a first core of the first group. This dynamic hardware-based context switch can be transparent to the OS. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 03-20-2014 |
20140115362 | OPERATING POINT MANAGEMENT IN MULTI-CORE ARCHITECTURES - For one disclosed embodiment, a processor comprises a plurality of processor cores to operate at variable performance levels. One of the plurality of processor cores may operate at one time at a performance level different than a performance level at which another one of the plurality of processor cores may operate at the one time. The plurality of processor cores are in a same package. Logic of the processor is to set one or more operating parameters for one or more of the plurality of processor cores. Logic of the processor is to monitor activity of one or more of the plurality of processor cores. Logic of the processor is to constrain power of one or more of the plurality of processor cores based at least in part on the monitored activity. The logic to constrain power is to limit a frequency at which one or more of the plurality of processor cores may be set. Other embodiments are also disclosed. | 04-24-2014 |
20140129808 | MIGRATING TASKS BETWEEN ASYMMETRIC COMPUTING ELEMENTS OF A MULTI-CORE PROCESSOR - In one embodiment, the present invention includes a multicore processor having first and second cores to independently execute instructions, the first core visible to an operating system (OS) and the second core transparent to the OS and heterogeneous from the first core. A task controller, which may be included in or coupled to the multicore processor, can cause dynamic migration of a first process scheduled by the OS to the first core to the second core transparently to the OS. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 05-08-2014 |
20140181352 | INTERCONNECT TO COMMUNICATE INFORMATION UNI-DIRECTIONALLY - A processor includes at least one core, a power control unit, and a first interconnect to couple with a peripheral controller. The first interconnect is to provide a first uni-directional communication path for communication of first power management data from the processor to the peripheral controller. Other embodiments are described and claimed. | 06-26-2014 |
20140181830 | THREAD MIGRATION SUPPORT FOR ARCHITECTUALLY DIFFERENT CORES - According to one embodiment, a processor includes a plurality of processor cores for executing a plurality of threads, a shared storage communicatively coupled to the plurality of processor cores, a power control unit (PCU) communicatively coupled to the plurality of processors to determine, without any software (SW) intervention, if a thread being performed by a first processor core should be migrated to a second processor core, and a migration unit, in response to receiving an instruction from the PCU to migrate the thread, to store at least a portion of architectural state of the first processor core in the shared storage and to migrate the thread to the second processor core, without any SW intervention, such that the second processor core can continue executing the thread based on the architectural state from the shared storage without knowledge of the SW. | 06-26-2014 |
20140189297 | HETERGENEOUS PROCESSOR APPARATUS AND METHOD - A heterogeneous processor architecture is described. For example, a processor according to one embodiment of the invention comprises: a set of two or more small physical processor cores; at least one large physical processor core having relatively higher performance processing capabilities and relatively higher power usage relative to the small physical processor cores; virtual-to-physical (V-P) mapping logic to expose the set of two or more small physical processor cores to software through a corresponding set of virtual cores and to hide the at least one large physical processor core from the software. | 07-03-2014 |
20140189299 | HETERGENEOUS PROCESSOR APPARATUS AND METHOD - A heterogeneous processor architecture is described. For example, a processor according to one embodiment of the invention comprises: a set of large physical processor cores; a set of small physical processor cores having relatively lower performance processing capabilities and relatively lower power usage relative to the large physical processor cores; virtual-to-physical (V-P) mapping logic to expose the set of large physical processor cores to software through a corresponding set of virtual cores and to hide the set of small physical processor core from the software. | 07-03-2014 |
20140189302 | OPTIMAL LOGICAL PROCESSOR COUNT AND TYPE SELECTION FOR A GIVEN WORKLOAD BASED ON PLATFORM THERMALS AND POWER BUDGETING CONSTRAINTS - A processor includes multiple physical cores that support multiple logical cores of different core types, where the core types include a big core type and a small core type. A multi-threaded application includes multiple software threads are concurrently executed by a first subset of logical cores in a first time slot. Based on data gathered from monitoring the execution in the first time slot, the processor selects a second subset of logical cores for concurrent execution of the software threads in a second time slot. Each logical core in the second subset has one of the core types that matches the characteristics of one of the software threads. | 07-03-2014 |
20140189704 | HETERGENEOUS PROCESSOR APPARATUS AND METHOD - A heterogeneous processor architecture is described. For example, a processor according to one embodiment of the invention comprises: a first set of one or more physical processor cores having first processing characteristics; a second set of one or more physical processor cores having second processing characteristics different from the first processing characteristics; virtual-to-physical (V-P) mapping logic to expose a plurality of virtual processors to software, the plurality of virtual processors to appear to the software as a plurality of homogeneous processor cores, the software to allocate threads to the virtual processors as if the virtual processors were homogeneous processor cores; wherein the V-P mapping logic is to map each virtual processor to a physical processor within the first set of physical processor cores or the second set of physical processor cores such that a thread allocated to a first virtual processor by software is executed by a physical processor mapped to the first virtual processor from the first set or the second set of physical processors. | 07-03-2014 |
20140281634 | CONTROLLING POWER SUPPLY UNIT POWER CONSUMPTION DURING IDLE STATE - Methods and apparatus relating to controlling power consumption by a Power Supply Unit (PSU) during idle state are described. In one embodiment, a power supply unit enters a lower power consumption state (e.g. S9) based on power state information, corresponding to one or more components of the platform, and comparison of a first value (corresponding to a frequency/frequentness of entry into the lower power consumption state) to a first threshold value. Other embodiments are also disclosed and claimed. | 09-18-2014 |
20140317430 | METHOD, APPARATUS, AND SYSTEM FOR ENERGY EFFICIENCY AND ENERGY CONSERVATION INCLUDING OPTIMIZING C-STATE SELECTION UNDER VARIABLE WAKEUP RATES - A processor may include power management techniques to, dynamically, chose an optimal C-state for the processing core. The measurement of real workloads on the OSes exhibit two important observations (1) the bursts of high interrupt rate are interspersed between the low interrupt rate periods and long periods of high activity levels; and (2) the interrupt rate may, suddenly, fall below an interrupt rate (of 1 milli-second, for example) that is typical of the current operating systems (OS). Instead of determining the C-state based on the stale data stored in the counters, the power control logic may determine an optimal C-state by overriding the C-state determined by the OS or any other power monitoring logic. The power control logic may, dynamically, determine an optimal C-state based on the CPU idle residency times and variable rate wakeup events to match the expected wakeup event rate. | 10-23-2014 |
20140325184 | MECHANISM FOR SAVING AND RETRIEVING MICRO-ARCHITECTURE CONTEXT - A processor saves micro-architectural contexts to increase the efficiency of code execution and power management. Power management hardware during runtime monitors execution of a code block. The code block has been compiled to have a reserved space appended to one end of the code block. The reserved space includes a metadata block associated with the code block or an identifier of the metadata block. The hardware stores a micro-architectural context of the processor in the metadata block. The micro-architectural context includes performance data resulting from a first execution of the code block. The hardware reads the metadata block upon a second execution of the code block and tunes the second execution based on the performance data. | 10-30-2014 |
20150052377 | Method And Apparatus For A Zero Voltage Processor - Embodiments of the invention relate to a method and apparatus for a zero voltage processor sleep state. A processor may include a dedicated cache memory. A voltage regulator may be coupled to the processor to provide an operating voltage to the processor. During a transition to a zero voltage power management state for the processor, the operational voltage applied to the processor by the voltage regulator may be reduced to approximately zero and the state variables associated with the processor may be saved to the dedicated cache memory. | 02-19-2015 |
20150058667 | Method And Apparatus For A Zero Voltage Processor - Embodiments of the invention relate to a method and apparatus for a zero voltage processor sleep state. A processor may include a dedicated cache memory. A voltage regulator may be coupled to the processor to provide an operating voltage to the processor. During a transition to a zero voltage power management state for the processor, the operational voltage applied to the processor by the voltage regulator may be reduced to approximately zero and the state variables associated with the processor may be saved to the dedicated cache memory. | 02-26-2015 |