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:
Feb. 07, 2012
Filed:
Jul. 25, 2011
Carl Gyllenhammer, Scotts Valley, CA (US);
Greg Watson, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Venkat Gaddam, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Varadarajan Srinivasan, Los Altos Hills, CA (US);
Sandeep Khanna, Los Altos, CA (US);
Chetan Deshpande, San Jose, CA (US);
Carl Gyllenhammer, Scotts Valley, CA (US);
Greg Watson, Palo Alto, CA (US);
Venkat Gaddam, Sunnyvale, CA (US);
Varadarajan Srinivasan, Los Altos Hills, CA (US);
Sandeep Khanna, Los Altos, CA (US);
Chetan Deshpande, San Jose, CA (US);
NetLogic Microsystems, Inc., Santa Clara, CA (US);
Abstract
The power consumption of a search engine such as a CAM device is dynamically adjusted to prevent performance degradation and/or damage resulting from overheating. For some embodiments, the CAM device is continuously sampled to generate sampling signals indicating the number of active states and number of compare operations performed during each sampling period. The sampling signals are accumulated to generate an estimated device power profile, which is compared with reference values corresponding to predetermined power levels to generate a dynamic power control signal indicating predicted increases in the device's operating temperature resulting from its power consumption. The dynamic power control signal is then used to selectively reduce the input data rate of the CAM device, thereby reducing power consumption and allowing the device to cool.