Patent ID: 8689027

Claim:
A method of power management within a tiled storage device comprising a plurality of tiles for storing values, wherein the storage device comprises an internal network for communicating the values among the tiles, and wherein the tiles include network circuits for interfacing with the internal network, and storage circuits for storing the values, the method comprising: within the storage device, transferring the values between the tiles according to a movement heuristic over the internal network, wherein the internal network automatically transfers the values according to the movement heuristic to provide vacant storage locations for other values written to the tiled storage device from an external device; within the tiles, measuring activity levels at the individual tiles, wherein the activity levels are reflective of rate of the transfer of values between the individual tiles and other tiles over the network; determining, within the individual tiles, whether or not the activity level at the individual tile is greater than or equal to a threshold; responsive to determining that the activity level at the individual tiles is greater than or equal to the threshold, maintaining the individual tiles in a fully active state, in which the values are written to and retrieved from in the storage circuits, and in which the values stored in the tiles that are in the fully active state are transferred according to the movement heuristic to be stored in next tiles; and responsive to determining that the activity level at the individual tiles is less than the threshold, placing the storage circuits of individual tiles in a power-saving state, in which the values are not stored in the storage circuits, and maintaining the network circuits in an operational state, whereby the values are communicated through individual tiles that are in the power-saving state, so that the values transferred according to the movement heuristic bypass the tiles that are in the power-saving state without being stored in the tiles that are in the power-saving state.