The present invention provides for predicting peak cylinder temperatures above which knock in an engine may become more frequent and then provides one or more actuation approaches to reduce the knock of the engine while maintaining engine performance. The actuation approaches of the present invention include one or more of direct injection, engine gas recirculation, and spark retarding, where the application of one or more the actuation approaches is determined based upon using operational and engine characteristic inputs as well as modeling and estimation values as inputs in a feedforward control methodology.