Patent ID: 8627128

Claim:
A method for managing power in a data processing system, the method comprising: responsive to receiving a request to increase a processing capacity of a set of resources in the data processing system, activating a core in the data processing system configured to operate at a first frequency, wherein the core is part of the set of resources, and determining a second frequency of a set of cores in the set of resources, wherein the first frequency is less than the second frequency; determining whether a use of power resulting from activating the core configured to operate at the first frequency meets a policy for the use of the power in the data processing system by increasing the first frequency of the core until the use of power resulting from operating the core at the first frequency reaches a threshold in the policy for the use of power in the data processing system and a first value of the first frequency reaches a second value of the second frequency of the set of cores; and responsive to the use of power resulting from operating the core at the first frequency reaching the threshold before the first value of the first frequency reaches the second value of the second frequency of the set of cores, indicating that the request to increase the processing capacity is unavailable and deactivating the core.