Thermally adaptive quality-of-service

• US 10,095,286 B2
• Filed: 09/30/2014
• Issued: 10/09/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 05/30/2014
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Original Assignee: Apple Inc.
• Inventors: Kumar, Derek R.
• Primary Examiner(s): Bae, Ji H
• Application Number:
  US14/503,321
• Publication Number:
  US 20150346800A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,470 Days
• Field of Search: 713323, 713300, 718100, 718102, 718103
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/206 comprising thermal management
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3206 Monitoring of events, devices or parameters that trigger a change in power modality
• 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 1/329 by task scheduling
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/3296 by lowering the supply or operating voltage
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/4893 taking into account power or heat criteria power management in computers in general G06F1/3203; thermal management in computers in general G06F1/206
• CPC Class Codes: Y02D 10/00 Energy efficient computing, e.g. low power processors, power management or thermal management

Abstract

A method and apparatus of a device that manages a thermal profile of a device by selectively throttling central processing unit operations of the device is described. The device manages a thermal profile of the device by adjusting a throttling a central processing unit execution of a historically high energy consuming task. In this embodiment, the device monitors thermal level of the thermal profile of the device, the device is executing a plurality of tasks that utilize a plurality of processing cores of the device. If the thermal level of the device exceeds a thermal threshold, the device identifies one of the plurality of tasks as a historically high energy consuming task, and throttles this historically high energy consuming task by setting a force idle execution time for the historically high energy consuming task. The device further executes the plurality of tasks.

Claims

1. A non-transitory machine-readable medium having executable instructions to cause one or more processing units to perform a method to manage a thermal profile of a device, the method comprising:

monitoring thermal level of the thermal profile of the device, wherein the device is executing a plurality of tasks that utilize a plurality of processing cores of the device;

if the thermal level of the device exceeds a thermal threshold,

identifying one of the plurality of tasks as a historically high energy consuming task, wherein the identifying is based on at least information about historical energy consumption from a database that tracks energy consumption from previously running tasks, and

throttling the historically high energy consuming task by setting a force idle execution time for the historically high energy consuming task, wherein the force idle time is a percentage greater than zero and less than a hundred, wherein the force idle time percentage is set by the system according to the threshold exceeded; and

executing the plurality of tasks.

2. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1, wherein a selective forced idle is an amount of time during an execution window that a task is not being executed.

3. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 2, further comprising:

putting a first processing core in a low power state during the selective forced idle.

4. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 2, further comprising:

overlapping the selective forced idle execution time with another one of the plurality of task that has a corresponding selective forced idle execution time.

5. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1, wherein a historically high energy consuming task is a task that consumes more energy than an average of the plurality of tasks.

6. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1, further comprising:

capturing energy consumption data for the plurality of tasks.

7. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 6, wherein the energy consumption data for one of the plurality of tasks is the amount of energy that is used by the device to execute that task.

8. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the executing the tasks comprises executing the plurality of tasks on a plurality of processing cores of the device.

9. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the thermal level is selected from the group consisting of device temperature and audible fan noise.

10. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the monitoring of the thermal level comprises:

recording the device temperature.

11. The non-transitory machine-readable medium of claim 1, wherein the historically high energy consuming task is a foreground task.

12. A method to manage a thermal profile of a device, the method comprising:

monitoring thermal level of the thermal profile of the device, wherein the device is executing a plurality of tasks that utilize a plurality of processing cores of the device;

if the thermal level of the device exceeds a thermal threshold,

identifying one of the plurality of tasks as a historically high energy consuming task, wherein the identifying is based on at least information about historical energy consumption from a database that tracks energy consumption from previously running tasks, and

throttling the historically high energy consuming task by setting a force idle execution time for the historically high energy consuming task, wherein the force idle time is a percentage greater than zero and less than a hundred, wherein the force idle time percentage is set by the system according to the threshold exceeded; and

executing the plurality of tasks.

13. The method of claim 12, wherein a selective forced idle is an amount of time during an execution window that a task is not being executed.

14. The method of claim 13, further comprising:

overlapping the selective forced idle execution time with another one of the plurality of task that has a corresponding selective forced idle execution time.

15. The method of claim 13, wherein a historically high energy consuming task is a task that consumes more energy than an average of the plurality of tasks.