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 priorità

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

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