Patent ID: 8281160

Claim:
A method comprising: providing pre-defined active chip power dissipation values related to operating frequency points of a chip; providing pre-defined idle chip power dissipation values related to the operating frequency points of the chip; based upon a computational and memory composition of a workload of a central processing unit (CPU) configured within the chip, analyzing memory statistics at two or more of the operating frequency points, wherein the memory statistics include at least one prior CPU utilization percentage; based upon the memory statistics that have been analyzed, predicting future CPU utilization percentages at the two or more operating frequency points; determining an operating frequency point set that provides overall power dissipation values at the two or more operating frequency points, wherein the overall power dissipation values are related to (i) the active chip power dissipation values at the two or more chip operating frequency points, (ii) the idle chip dissipation power values at the two or more chip operating frequency points, and (iii) the future CPU utilization percentages, wherein each operating frequency in the operating frequency point set is able to provide substantially adequate bandwidth for a current workload of the CPU; and selecting an operating frequency for the chip from the operating frequency point set, wherein the operating frequency that is selected provides a desired overall power dissipation value of the chip while still providing the substantially adequate bandwidth for the current workload of the CPU, wherein the operating frequency point set is defined as { F 1 ⁢ : P 1 = A ⁢ ⁢ P 1 × C ⁢ ⁢ P ⁢ ⁢ U ⁢ % ⁡ [ 1 ] n + I ⁢ ⁢ P 1 × ( 1 - C ⁢ ⁢ P ⁢ ⁢ U ⁢ % ⁡ [ 1 ] n ) F 2 ⁢ : P 2 = A ⁢ ⁢ P 2 × C ⁢ ⁢ P ⁢ ⁢ U ⁢ % ⁡ [ 2 ] n + I ⁢ ⁢ P 2 × ( 1 - C ⁢ ⁢ P ⁢ ⁢ U ⁢ % ⁡ [ 2 ] n ) … F N ⁢ : P N = A ⁢ ⁢ P N × C ⁢ ⁢ P ⁢ ⁢ U ⁢ % ⁡ [ N ] n + I ⁢ ⁢ P N × ( 1 - C ⁢ ⁢ P ⁢ ⁢ U ⁢ % ⁡ [ N ] n ) , and wherein F represents an operating frequency of the chip, P represents overall power dissipation of the chip at a frequency F, AP represents an active mode power dissipation value of the chip, CPU % represents a percentage that the CPU is in an active mode, and IP represents an idle mode power dissipation value of the chip.