A processing system dynamically scales at least one of voltage and frequency at a subset of a plurality of compute units of a graphics processing unit (GPU) based on characteristics of a kernel or workload to be executed at the subset. A system management unit for the processing system receives a compute unit mask, designating the subset of a plurality of compute units of a GPU to execute the kernel or workload, and workload characteristics indicating the compute-boundedness or memory bandwidth-boundedness of the kernel or workload from a central processing unit of the processing system. The system management unit determines a dynamic voltage and frequency scaling policy for the subset of the plurality of compute units of the GPU based on the compute unit mask and the workload characteristics.