Abstract:
PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide a technology for dividing a microprocessor into a plurality of clock domains, and for controlling their power consumption.SOLUTION: Disclosed is a device and method for scaling a frequency and operating voltage of at least one clock domain of a microprocessor. As for the clock signal frequency and operating voltage of each clock domain of the processor, a pair of the clock signal frequency and operating voltage minimizing a rate of energy delay square products with respect to first and second time intervals is selected.
Abstract:
Techniques are described for providing an enhanced cache coherency protocol for a multi-core processor that includes a Speculative Request For Ownership Without Data (SRFOWD) for a portion of cache memory. With a SRFOWD, only an acknowledgement message may be provided as an answer to a requesting core. The contents of the affected cache line are not required to be a part of the answer. The enhanced cache coherency protocol may assure that a valid copy of the current cache line exists in case of misspeculation by the requesting core. Thus, an owner of the current copy of the cache line may maintain a copy of the old contents of the cache line. The old contents of the cache line may be discarded if speculation by the requesting core turns out to be correct. Otherwise, in case of misspeculation by the requesting core, the old contents of the cache line may be set back to a valid state.
Abstract:
A method and apparatus for scaling frequency and operating voltage of at least one clock domain of a microprocessor. More particularly, embodiments of the invention relate to techniques to divide a microprocessor into clock domains and control the frequency and operating voltage of each clock domain independently of the others.
Abstract:
Methods and apparatus to provide leakage power estimation are described. In one embodiment, one or more sensed temperature values (108) and one or more voltage values (110) are utilized to determine the leakage power of an integrated circuit (IC) component. Other embodiments are also described.
Abstract:
The invention concerns methods and devices for providing leakage power estimation. In one embodiment, one or more detected temperature values (108) and one or more voltage values (110) are used to determine the leakage power of an integrated circuit (IC) component. The invention further relates to other embodiments.
Abstract:
Disclosed is an apparatus and method to manage instruction cache prefetching from an instruction cache. A processor may comprise: a prefetch engine; a branch prediction engine to predict the outcome of a branch; and dynamic optimizer. The dynamic optimizer may be used to control: identifying common instruction cache misses and inserting a prefetch instruction from the prefetch engine to the instruction cache.