Invention Grant
- Patent Title: Method and apparatus for dynamic clock and voltage scaling in a computer processor based on program phase
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Application No.: US14986738Application Date: 2016-01-04
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Publication No.: US09851774B2Publication Date: 2017-12-26
- Inventor: Shivam Priyadarshi , Anil Krishna , Raguram Damodaran , Jeffrey Todd Bridges , Ryan Wells , Norman Gargash , Rodney Wayne Smith
- Applicant: QUALCOMM Incorporated
- Applicant Address: US CA San Diego
- Assignee: QUALCOMM Incorporated
- Current Assignee: QUALCOMM Incorporated
- Current Assignee Address: US CA San Diego
- Agency: Muncy, Geissler, Olds & Lowe, P.C.
- Main IPC: G06F1/32
- IPC: G06F1/32

Abstract:
The disclosure generally relates to dynamic clock and voltage scaling (DCVS) based on program phase. For example, during each program phase, a first hardware counter may count each cycle where a dispatch stall occurs and an oldest instruction in a load queue is a last-level cache miss, a second hardware counter may count total cycles, and a third hardware counter may count committed instructions. Accordingly, a software/firmware mechanism may read the various hardware counters once the committed instruction counter reaches a threshold value and divide a value of the first hardware counter by a value of the second hardware counter to measure a stall fraction during a current program execution phase. The measured stall fraction can then be used to predict a stall fraction in a next program execution phase such that optimal voltage and frequency settings can be applied in the next phase based on the predicted stall fraction.
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