Patent ID: 7870370

Claim:
A method of determining thermal characteristics of instruction sets, the instruction sets comprising one or more computer program instructions executed by a computer processor, the method comprising: tracking, in a performance counter, a number of classes of instructions run during execution of a plurality of instruction sets; identifying, for each instruction set, from the performance counter, a number of each class of instructions run during execution of the instruction set; and ranking the instruction sets in dependence upon the number of each class of instructions run during execution of each instruction set and a profile of thermal characteristics of classes of instruction, further comprising calculating for each instruction set a thermal characteristic score, including: determining, for each class of instructions run during the execution of the instruction set, a ratio of the number of the class of instructions run to a total number of instructions run during the execution of the instruction set; multiplying each ratio by a weight associated with each class of instructions, thereby providing products for each class of instructions for the instruction set; summing each of the products for each class of instructions for the instruction set; and ranking the instruction sets in dependence upon the calculated thermal characteristic scores of the instructions sets.