Adaptive Power Consumption Techniques

• US 20100131787A1
• Filed: 01/26/2010
• Published: 05/27/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 08/22/2002
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: NVIDIA Corporation
• Original Assignee: NVIDIA Corporation
• Inventors: van Welzen, James L., White, Jonathan B.
• Application Number:
  US12/694,193
• Publication Number:
  US 20100131787A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 713/322
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3203 Power management, i.e. event-based initiation of a power-saving mode
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/324 by lowering clock frequency
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3287 by switching off individual functional units in the computer system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/30083 Power or thermal control instructions
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

A method for adapting power consumption of a processor based upon an application demand is provided. The method initiates with determining an application demand based upon a current processing operation. Then, a time interval associated with the application demand is determined. Next, unnecessary power consuming functions for the application demand are determined. Then, a clock frequency for the unnecessary power consuming functions is reduced for the time interval. In one embodiment, the power is terminated to the unnecessary power consuming functions. In another embodiment, the clock frequency of the processor is adjusted for at least a portion of the time interval. A program interface for adapting power consumption of a computer system, processor instructions for adapting power consumption of a computer system and a processor are included.

Claims

1. One or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform a method comprising:

determining a future demand of an application;

determining a time interval associated with the future demand;

determining unnecessary power consuming functions within a processor based on the future demand; and

controlling power consumption of the processor based on the future demand, time interval and unnecessary power consuming functions.

2. The one or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform the method of claim 1, wherein the determined demand is associated with video decoding.

3. The one or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform the method of claim 2, wherein controlling power consumption of the processor comprises adjusting a clock frequency of the processor for each frame of a motion picture expert group (MPEG) standard.

4. The one or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform the method of claim 1, wherein controlling power consumption comprises writing data to the control register based on the future demand, time interval and unnecessary power consuming functions to control a clock speed of the processor.

5. The one or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform the method of claim 1, further comprising writing data to the control register based on the future demand, time interval and unnecessary power consuming functions to control a voltage of the processor.

6. The one or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform the method of claim 1, wherein the future demand of an application is determined through a hook to the application.

7. The one or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform the method of claim 6, wherein the hook to the application comprises an application program interface (API).

8. The one or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform the method of claim 6, wherein the hook to the application comprises an operating system (OS) interface.

9. The one or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform the method of claim 1, wherein one of the determined unnecessary power consuming functions includes one of a 3-dimensional graphics pipeline and a 2-dimensional graphics pipeline of a graphics processing unit.

10. The one or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform the method of claim 1, wherein the processor is selected from the group consisting of a central processing unit (CPU), a graphics processing unit (GPU), network processing unit (NPU) and a storage processing unit (SPU).

11. One or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform a method comprising:

determining a future per-frame demand of an application;

determining a time interval associated with the future per-frame demand;

determining unnecessary power consuming functions within a processor for the time interval and the future per-frame demand; and

controlling a clock speed of the processor and a plurality of power consuming functions of the processor based on the future per frame demand, the time interval and the unnecessary power consuming function.

12. The one or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform the method of claim 11, wherein the clock speed of the processor is adjusted for one or more frames of a motion picture expert group (MPEG) standard.

13. The one or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform the method of claim 12, wherein the processor comprises a graphics processing unit (GPU).

14. The one or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform the method of claim 13, wherein one of the determined unnecessary power consuming functions includes one of a 3-dimensional graphics pipeline and a 2-dimensional graphics pipeline of the graphics processing unit.

15. The one or more computing device readable media having computing device executable instructions which when executed perform the method of claim 12, wherein the future per-frame demand of an application is associated with playback of a movie on a portable computer.