Patent ID: 8484498

Claim:
A system comprising: a processing node; and a power management circuit configured to, for each of a plurality of first time intervals, monitor an activity level of the processing node and further configured to: cause the processing node to operate, independent of operating system software, at a predefined high operating point of a plurality of operating points during at least one successive first time interval if the activity level in a given first time interval is greater than a high activity threshold; cause the processing node to operate, independent of operating system software, at a predefined low operating point of the plurality of operating points for the at least one successive first time interval if the activity level in the given first time interval is less than a low activity threshold; and enable operating system software to cause the processing node to operate at one of one or more predefined intermediate operating points of the plurality of operating points for the at least one successive first time interval if the activity level is between the low activity threshold and the high activity threshold.