Patent ID: 8191062

Claim:
A method comprising: obtaining state information, in a frequency governor of a first virtual machine (“VM”) of a host including a plurality of VMs, from a virtual machine manager (“VMM”) on the host, wherein the state information indicates a state of the VMM, the state information being an active state if at least one of the plurality of VMs is active and a sleep state if none of the plurality of VMs are active; deriving, in the frequency governor, utilization of a central processing unit (“CPU”) of the host that is utilized by the plurality of VMs based on the state information, wherein the VMM state is an indicator of a state of the CPU and the VMM does not intercept timer interrupts from the plurality of VMs, and the frequency governor is to derive the utilization without monitoring activity of each of the plurality of VMs on the host; and governing a frequency of the CPU, via the frequency governor, based on the utilization.