The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Apr. 23, 2019
Filed:
Feb. 18, 2016
Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA (US);
James Wang, Vista, CA (US);
Benjiman L. Goodman, Cedar Park, TX (US);
Liang-Kai Wang, Austin, TX (US);
Robert D. Kenney, Austin, TX (US);
Apple Inc., Cupertino, CA (US);
Abstract
A method and apparatus for saving power in integrated circuits is disclosed. An IC includes functional circuit blocks which are not placed into a sleep mode when idle. A power management circuit may monitor the activity levels of the functional circuit blocks not placed into a sleep mode. When the power management circuit detects that an activity level of one of the non-sleep functional circuit blocks is less than a predefined threshold, it reduce the frequency of a clock signal provided thereto by scheduling only one pulse of a clock signal for every N pulses of the full frequency clock signal. The remaining N−1 pulses of the clock signal may be inhibited. If a high priority transaction inbound for the functional circuit block is detected, an inserted pulse of the clock signal may be provided to the functional unit irrespective of when a most recent regular pulse was provided.