Qualcomm Incorporated

Jeffrey A Niemann

Jon James Anderson

Sumit Sur

James Michael Artmeier

Qing Li

Bohuslav Rychlik

Amit Mahajan

Srinivasan Rajagopalan

Vasanth Kumar Ramkumar

Christopher L Medrano

Vijay Raman

Joshua D Thielen

Christopher Lee Medrano

Methods, systems, and devices are described for managing power of a user equipment (UE). A UE modem may determine the state of charge of the battery to determine that the battery is in one of two or more charge state levels, and may invoke one or more modem power saving modes based on the charge state level. Power saving modes may include, for example, reducing a number of available receive chains in a UE, initiating a time delay between one or more frequency scan requests performed by the UE, reducing a rate of neighbor search requests performed by the UE, providing a buffer status report (BSR) parameter that indicates a reduced amount of buffer data relative to an actual amount of buffer data for the UE, and/or adjusting a maximum transmit power level for an uplink channel.

Methods and apparatus for reducing modem power based on a present state of charge of battery

A method and system for managing one or more thermal policies of a portable computing device (PCD) includes monitoring temperature of the portable computing device with internal thermal sensors and external thermal sensors. If a change in temperature has been detected by at least one thermal sensor, then a thermal policy manager may increase a frequency in which temperature readings are detected by the thermal sensors. The thermal policy manager may also determine if a current temperature of the portable computing device as detected by one or more of the thermal sensors falls within one or more predetermined thermal states. Each thermal state may be assigned a unique set of thermal mitigation techniques. Each set of thermal mitigation techniques may be different from one another. The sets of thermal mitigation techniques may differ according to quantity of techniques and impacts on performance of the PCD.

Method and system for managing thermal policies of a portable computing device

Methods and systems for leveraging temperature sensors in a portable computing device ('PCD') are disclosed. The sensors may be placed within the PCD near known thermal energy producing components such as a central processing unit ('CPU') core, graphical processing unit (&#x201c;GPU&#x201d;) core, power management integrated circuit (&#x201c;PMIC&#x201d;), power amplifier, etc. The signals generated by the sensors may be monitored and used to trigger drivers running on the processing units. The drivers are operable to cause the reallocation of processing loads associated with a given component's generation of thermal energy, as measured by the sensors. In some embodiments, the processing load reallocation is mapped according to parameters associated with pre-identified thermal load scenarios. In other embodiments, the reallocation occurs in real time, or near real time, according to thermal management solutions generated by a thermal management algorithm that may consider CPU and/or GPU performance specifications along with monitored sensor data.

Method and system for thermal load management in a portable computing device

Methods and systems for managing thermal load distribution on a portable computing device ('PCD') include storing on a PCD a plurality of thermal load steering scenarios which identify simulated thermal load conditions for the PCD, corresponding simulated workloads that produced the simulated thermal load conditions, and thermal load steering parameters for steering the simulated thermal load to a predetermined spatial location on the PCD. A scheduled workload for the PCD is monitored to identify a match with one of the thermal load steering scenarios so that the workload may be scheduled according to a thermal load steering parameter. Another method includes initiating a thermal mitigation technique on a PCD and determining a current graphical load being processed by the PCD. A graphics feature associated with the current graphical load is identified. The graphics feature is then disabled while maintaining a frame rate to reduce temperature of the PCD.

Method and system for controlling thermal load distribution in a portable computing device

A method and system for temperature-driven airlink selection in a multi-mode wireless device is disclosed. The method may include monitoring a temperature in the multi-mode wireless device while the multi-mode wireless device operates in a first airlink mode, determining whether to switch the airlink mode of the multi-mode wireless device in response to a change in the monitored temperature, and switching the multi-mode wireless device to operate in a second airlink mode in response to a determination to switch the airlink mode.

Temperature-driven airlink selection in a multi-mode wireless device

The aspects enable a computing device or microprocessor to scale the frequency and/or voltage of a processor to an optimal value balancing performance and power savings in view of a current processor workload. Busy and/or idle duration statistics are calculated from the processor during execution. The statistics may include a running average busy and/or idle duration or idle/busy ratio, a variance of the running average and a trend of the running average. Current busy or idle durations or an idle-to-busy ratio may be computed based on collected statistics. The current idle-to-busy ratio may be compared to a target idle-to-busy ratio and the frequency/voltage of the processor may be adjusted based on the results of the comparison to drive the current running average toward the target value. The target value of idle-to-busy ratio may be adjusted based on the calculated variance and/or trend values.

Dynamic voltage and clock scaling control based on running average, variant and trend

Various embodiments of methods and systems for controlling and/or managing thermal energy generation on a portable computing device that contains a heterogeneous multi-core processor are disclosed. Because individual cores in a heterogeneous processor may exhibit different processing efficiencies at a given temperature, thermal mitigation techniques that compare performance curves of the individual cores at their measured operating temperatures can be leveraged to manage thermal energy generation in the PCD by allocating and/or reallocating workloads among the individual cores based on the performance curve comparison.

System and method for managing thermal energy generation in a heterogeneous multi-core processor

Various embodiments of methods and systems for determining the thermal status of processing components within a portable computing device ('PCD') by measuring leakage current on power rails associated with the components are disclosed. One such method involves measuring current on a power rail after a processing component has entered a 'wait for interrupt' mode. Advantageously, because a processing component may &#x201c;power down&#x201d; in such a mode, any current remaining on the power rail associated with the processing component may be attributable to leakage current. Based on the measured leakage current, a thermal status of the processing component may be determined and thermal management policies consistent with the thermal status of the processing component implemented. Notably, it is an advantage of embodiments that the thermal status of a processing component within a PCD may be established without the need to leverage temperature sensors.

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Boulder, CO, United States of America

Jeffrey A Niemann