Advanced Micro Devices Corporation

Ati Technologies Ulc

Jeff Herman

Krishna Sitaraman

Brian D Emberling

Mihir Shaileshbhai Doctor

Stephen David Presant

Michael Foxcroft

Ali Ibrahim

George A W Guthrie

Shirley Pui Shan Lam

Alexander Shternshain

Seth Hendrickson

Methods and apparatuses are provided for power control in a processor. The apparatus comprises a plurality of operational units arranged as a group of operational units. A power consumption monitor determines when cumulative power consumption of the group of operational units exceeds a threshold (e.g., either or both of the cumulative power threshold and the cumulative power rate threshold) during a time interval, after which a filter for issuing instructions to the group of operational units suspends instruction issuance to the group of operational units for the remainder of the time interval. The method comprises monitoring cumulative power consumption by a group of operational units within a processor over a time interval. If the cumulative power consumption of the group of operational units exceeds the threshold, instruction issuance to the group of operational units is suspended for the remainder of the time interval.

Processor with power control via instruction issuance

A device may generate a clock signal using spread-spectrum clocking. The spread-spectrum clocking may modulate a frequency of the clock signal to produce a plurality of frequencies for the clock signal during a modulation cycle. The device may receive an instruction to disable the spread-spectrum clocking, and may disable the spread spectrum clocking at the end of the modulation cycle.

Disabling spread-spectrum clock signal generation

Growing community of inventors

Sunnyvale, CA, United States of America

Jeff Herman