Patent ID: 7996847

Claim:
A method for selectively allocating and deallocating processing resources, comprising: providing a plurality of processors, each processor having thermal control circuit (TCC) logic; determining a processing requirement for the plurality of processors; dynamically controlling a processing capability of the plurality of processors to provide the determined processing requirement by selectively enabling or disabling the TCC logic of each processor, the dynamic controlling comprising: selectively enabling the TCC logic of a processor to reduce a processing capability of that processor; and selectively disabling the TCC logic of a processor to increase a processing capability of that processor; and billing a customer based on the dynamically controlled processing capability of the plurality of processors, wherein the customer is billed for an on-demand processing resource cost according to: on-demand processing resource cost=(a cost factor (CF))*(a number of inactive TCC logic signals)*(a time elapsed while a TCC logic signal is inactive), wherein the CF comprises: (a price of additional processors installed)+(a predetermined amount of profit generated from the additional processors)/(a time to reach a predetermined revenue).