Method and system for rebooting a processor in a multi-processor system

Abstract

Processors arranged in a multi-processor configuration for substantially parallel operations receive their initialization data in order to start operations, such as graphics computations, real-time multimedia streaming, etc. Due to a change in the processing load, one or more processors might be deactivated. Subsequently, the load increases to such a level that requires all or some of the deactivated processors to be active again. In this case, the boot-up process of the entire system is not carried out as it would be time-consuming and wasteful; instead, responsive to a control signal only those processors that were previously in inactive mode are re-initialized by selecting a configuration data supplied by another processor, controller or any other intelligent programmable device. Alternatively, the configuration data may be accessed and retrieved from a local storage medium individually located in each processor, thereby re-booting only those inactive processors and without re-initializing the entire system.