Patent ID: 7490256

Claim:
In a computer that includes a processor and a software system for managing a power consumption of the processor, a computer-implemented method of identifying a target idle state for the processor, the method comprising: (a) collecting data from a plurality of data sources, wherein the plurality of data sources: (i) measures activities that have occurred or will occur on the computer; and (ii) describes attributes of the hardware on the computer; (b) using the collected data to calculate a target idle state that minimizes the power consumption, wherein: using the collected data comprises using a metric to identify the target idle state, using the metric to identify the target idle state includes assigning a significance to each of factors used to calculate the target idle state, and at least one first factor among the factors is assigned a greater significance than another factor; and (c) changing the idle state of the processor to the target idle state without requiring the processor to proceed linearly between idle states.