Patent ID: 8001402

Claim:
An apparatus for providing power management in a computer system, said apparatus comprising: a sensing arrangement which senses power consumption and compares power consumption to a predetermined limit; a monitoring arrangement which monitors at least one entity acting to set host processor p-states; said monitoring arrangement acting to modulate host processor p-states; and a p-state table shared between said sensing arrangement and said monitoring arrangement, wherein the monitoring arrangement acts to modulate the host processor p-states by referencing the p-states available in the p-state table, and wherein responsive to a breach of the predetermined limit, said sensing arrangement changes said p-state table by one of (i) removing a higher p-state from the p-state table and forcing the monitoring arrangement to select a lower p-state, and (ii) lowering a higher p-state limit in the p-state table and forcing the monitoring arrangement to select a lower p-state.