Techniques are described for adaptive device power management. The device interface application of a hardware computing unit detects a launch of an application by the operating system (OS) to be executed on the hardware computing unit, in an implementation. The device interface application identifies the launched application and determines whether a hardware profile exists that is associated with the application. The hardware profile includes one or more hardware parameters that yield the optimal performance for power consumption by the hardware computing unit when executing the launched application. Based on determining that the hardware profile exists, the power policy of the OS is updated for the launched application, and thereby, the driver updates the power state(s) of the hardware computing unit based on the new power policy.