Priority based throttling for power/performance quality of service

Abstract

A method and apparatus for throttling power and/or performance of processing elements based on a priority of software entities is herein described. Priority aware power management logic receives priority levels of software entities and modifies operating points of processing elements associated with the software entities accordingly. Therefore, in a power savings mode, processing elements executing low priority applications/tasks are reduced to a lower operating point, i.e. lower voltage, lower frequency, throttled instruction issue, throttled memory accesses, and/or less access to shared resources. In addition, utilization logic potentially trackes utilization of a resource per priority level, which allows the power manager to determine operating points based on the effect of each priority level on each other from the perspective of the resources themselves. Moreover, a software entity itself may assign operating points, which the power manager enforces.