Method and system for real-time estimation and prediction of the thermal state of a microprocessor unit

• US 7,748,895 B2
• Filed: 10/31/2007
• Issued: 07/06/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 07/16/2004
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: GlobalFoundries, Inc.
• Original Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
• Inventors: Sharma, Arun, Sri-Jayantha, Sri M., Dang, Hien P.
• Primary Examiner(s): Verbitsky; Gail
• Assistant Examiner(s): Jagan; Mirellys
• Application Number:
  US11/930,633
• Publication Number:
  US 20080059111A1
• Time in Patent Office: 979 Days
• Field of Search: 374/134, 374/137, 374/141, 702/130
• US Class Current: 374/134
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/206 comprising thermal management

Abstract

A method (and system) of predicting a thermal state of a transient thermal system, includes combining sensor outputs and thermal parameters to construct a consistent set of estimates of internal temperature of a transient thermal system.

Claims

1. A method of predicting future temperature, comprising:

determining a temperature at a location on a semiconductor chip;

embedding information into instructions stored in an instruction cache;

computing future power to be dissipated in executing the instructions in said instruction cache based on the embedded information; and

predicting a future temperature at the location on the semiconductor chip based on the determined temperature and the computed future power.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein said determining said temperature comprises:

measuring a temperature on the semiconductor chip; and

interpolating measured temperature to extract maximum temperature.

3. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

shifting a cooling capability based on said future power computed.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein said determining said temperature comprises:

demarcating a surface of the chip into finite and contiguous zones;

developing a reduced order estimator model for dynamic heat transfer from the chip surface to ambient; and

deploying temperature sensors on or near the chip and estimating missing temperature components.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein said computing said future power comprises mapping the instruction cache into a sequence of X-Y distributed quanta of heat packets.

6. A method of predicting a temperature on semiconductor chip, comprising:

determining a temperature at a location on a surface of a semiconductor chip at a sampling time, n;

projecting an amount of energy to be released at the sampling time, n, by executing a plurality of instructions stored in an instruction cache in microprocessor formed on the surface of the semiconductor chip based on information embedded in the plurality of instructions; and

predicting a temperature at the location on the surface of the semiconductor chip at a next time instant, n+1, based on the determined temperature and the projected amount of energy to be released.

7. The method of claim 6, wherein said determining said temperature comprises developing a global temperature distribution map for the surface of the semiconductor chip at the sampling time, n.

8. The method of claim 7, wherein said developing said global temperature distribution map comprises measuring a temperature at first locations on a semiconductor chip and estimating a temperature at second locations on the semiconductor chip.

9. The method of claim 6, wherein said cache stores a plurality of instructions, and execution of an instruction in the plurality of instructions by a microprocessor on the semiconductor chip releases a quanta of energy over a surface of the chip.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein the embedded information in an instruction of the plurality of instructions represents a quanta of energy distributed over a surface of the chip by an execution of the instruction by the microprocessor.