Patent ID: 8332665

Claim:
A data processing system, comprising: a plurality of throttled components capable of being dynamically throttled to a plurality of different performance level settings; a plurality of non-throttled components, wherein at least one of the non-throttled components cannot be regulated to trade performance for power consumption by a component which is not part of the at least one of the non-throttled components; a power manager which is configured to obtain at least one operating signal from the at least one of the non-throttled components at a first time interval, the power manager configured to determine a state of the at least one of the non-throttled components from the at least one operating signal, and is configured to dynamically determine a power usage requirement for the at least one of the non-throttled components at a second time interval according to the state, wherein the second time interval is after the first time interval; and a power supply coupled to the power manager to supply a power to the portion of the data processing system including at least one of the plurality of throttled components, the power supply being limited to a continuous state power capacity; wherein the power manager is capable of providing a worst case power consumption of the data processing system from the power supply to exceed the continuous state power capacity, while maintaining an average of power consumption of the data processing system over time under the continuous state power capacity based at least in part on the dynamically determined power usage requirement.