Advanced Micro Devices Corporation

Morrie Altmejd

Evandro Carlos Menezes

David Francis Tobias

Richard G Russell

Dave Tobias

Harsha Jagasia

An integrated circuit includes a plurality of functional blocks. Utilization information for the various functional blocks is generated. Based on that information, the power consumption and thus the performance levels of the functional blocks can be tuned. Thus, when a functional block is heavily loaded by an application, the performance level and thus power consumption of that particular functional block is increased. At the same time, other functional blocks that are not being heavily utilized and thus have lower performance requirements can be kept at a relatively low power consumption level. Thus, power consumption can be reduced overall without unduly impacting performance.

Performance and power optimization via block oriented performance measurement and control

A transaction is sent over a communication link to a receiving node. The transaction includes data along with a tag identifying a data type of the data. The receiving node either forwards or processes the data according to whether the data type matches the type of data type processed by circuitry associated with the receiving node. Thus, a destination is determined for data transported on the communication link using a data type identifier sent with the data.

Data stream labeling and processing

A computer system has multiple performance states. The computer system periodically determines utilization information for the computer system and adjusts the performance state according to the utilization information. If a performance increase is required, the computer system always goes to the maximum performance state. If a performance decrease is required, the computer system steps the performance state down to a next lower performance state.

Method and apparatus for improving responsiveness of a power management system in a computing device

System and method for controlling an intergrated circuit to enter a predetermined performance state by skipping all intermediate states based on the determined utilization of the intergrated circuit

An integrated circuit device provides an operational set point indicator. The operational set point indicator is utilized for obtaining a plurality of operational set points. Each of the plurality of operational set points can be a pair of an operational voltage and an operational frequency for application to the integrated circuit device. The operational set point indicator can be, for example, a Schmoo Class Register, a Device Identification Register, or actual operating condition information of the integrated circuit device. The Schmoo Class Register and the Device Identification Register are utilized to identify a performance state table in memory. The actual operating conditional information can be one or more entire Schmoo Plots for the device or a subset of such information. Operational set points are used during operation of the integrated circuit device, for example, in power management applications.

Processor operational range indicator

It has been discovered that system operational characteristics (e.g., power level, clock frequency, processor utilization, operating system time slice utilization, size and age of queued jobs) may be used to predict storage access requirements for the system. By predicting the storage access requirements of a system, a storage subsystem may be advantageously controlled to anticipate storage accesses. A storage device or array of such devices can be configured to operate, for example, at selected speeds no greater than that required to process the predicted storage access requirements. The storage access prediction may be based, for example, on the frequency and voltage at which a processor is running or based on other system performance indicators such as job backlog and age and size thereof. Various controllable characteristics such as the speed of a hard drive's storage media, the current applied to a read/write head, etc., can be increased or decreased continuously or to discrete values in response to moving average indicators which provide advance warning of potential processing, and therefore potential storage access, swings.

Storage device control responsive to operational characteristics of a system

A task queue management technique leverages infrastructure provided by file and operating systems to manage task queues substantially without otherwise typical problems regarding management of the size of the queue and/or the state of the queue (e.g., empty or full) while maintaining, regulating and altering the queue and the order of tasks in the queue. Task producer code is configurable to cause one or more executable files corresponding to each of one or more tasks to be stored in a queue directory responsive to receiving the one or more tasks. A file system associates each executable file with a time stamp indicating when the executable file was stored. Task consumer code is configurable to execute the one or more executable files in an order indicated by the time stamps associated with the executable files and to remove each executable file after execution of each executable file.

File system based task queue management

The present invention relates to a computer system and method of using temperature measurements in connection with a computer. In one embodiment, the method includes taking a temperature reading in connection with the computer, determining a desired operating temperature for the computer, comparing the temperature reading and the desired operating temperature to determine a temperature difference, and determining a user activity indication based on the temperature difference. In another embodiment, the system comprises a processor device having a clock input to receive a clock signal; a temperature measurement device responsive to the processor device, the temperature measurement device configured to take a temperature measurement for the processor device; and control logic responsive to the temperature measurement device. The control logic is to compare the temperature measurement to a desired operating temperature to determine a temperature difference. The clock signal applied to the clock input has a frequency that is increased when the temperature difference is positive.

Computer system and method of using temperature measurement readings to detect user activity and to adjust processor performance

A computer system that has multiple performance states periodically obtains utilization information for a plurality of tasks operating on the processor and determines processor utilization according to the utilization information for the plurality of tasks. The system compares the processor utilization to at least one threshold and selectively adjusts a current processor performance state to another performance state according to the comparison.

CPU utilization measurement techniques for use in power management

A computer system has multiple performance states. The computer system periodically determines if the software power state maintained by power management software that represents the power state of the processor or other computer system component matches the actual power state of the processor or other computer system component. If not, the actual power state and the software power state are resynchronized, for example, by reinitializing the power management software or otherwise causing the software power state to match the hardware power state.

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Austin, TX, United States of America

Morrie Altmejd