High-speed integrated thermal/power/performance management for high power density microprocessors
Data di pubblicazione
28-06-2016
Codice
DEIB.15.046.A
Data di prioritÃ
15-02-2016
Fase
Patent application in US and Europe
Titolare
Politecnico di Milano
Dipartimento
Department of Electronics, Information and Bioengineering
Autori
Alberto Leva, William Fornaciari, Federico Terraneo
Descrizione
We created a thermal control method for high power density microprocessors, that straightforwardly integrates with power/performance management. Our solution is capable of guaranteeing safe operation without unduly limiting speed. Thanks to a thorough exploitation of event-based control and to a convenient hardware/software partition, the solution causes a negligible computational overhead, and is easy to tune - also automatically - after the processor is deployed, to withstand heterogeneous operating conditions. Also, the solution is agnostic with respect to the operating system.
A prototype was realised, in which the hardware part is software-emulated, and proved successful beyond the current state of the art.
Campo di applicazione
The invention can be applied in all cases where a processor – or a digital processing unit at large - has thermal dissipation issues, provided that it supports DVFS and has a temperature sensor. In the case of multi-core processors, the invention is applicable to each core individually provided each has a DVFS and a temperature sensor.
Examples of products that can take advantage of this invention are:
processors (possibly multi-many core CPUs) for desktop computers, laptops, servers, smartphones, tablets; graphical processors (GPU) for desktop computers, laptops, servers, smartphones, tablets.
Vantaggi
- Guarantee thermal safety with, in the critical cases, only graceful degradation of the software exec speed.
- Seamless transition from maximum speed to thermally limited operation.
- Permit smooth and gradual transition from a performance oriented to a power saving oriented operation.
- Increase the processor performance while reducing the production cost, compared to solutions employing a dedicated microcontroller.
- Reduce thermal cycling, thus increasing reliability and life time of the devices.
-Automatically tuneable after deployment.
Stadio di sviluppo
Physical prototype.
Contatto
licensing.tto@polimi.it