Power management in an uncore fabric

• Main Authors: SHRALL, JEREMY J, ABRAHAM, VINIT MATHEW, NAGARAJAN, RAMADASS, HARRINGTON, EZRA N, HALLNOR, ERIK G
• Format: Patent
• Language: Chinese; English
• Published: 21.08.2018
• Subjects: CALCULATING; CLIMATE CHANGE MITIGATION TECHNOLOGIES IN INFORMATION ANDCOMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES [ICT], I.E. INFORMATION ANDCOMMUNICATION TECHNOLOGIES AIMING AT THE REDUCTION OF THIR OWNENERGY USE; COMPUTING; COUNTING; ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING; GENERAL TAGGING OF CROSS-SECTIONAL TECHNOLOGIES SPANNING OVER SEVERAL SECTIONS OF THE IPC; GENERAL TAGGING OF NEW TECHNOLOGICAL DEVELOPMENTS; PHYSICS; TECHNICAL SUBJECTS COVERED BY FORMER USPC CROSS-REFERENCE ART COLLECTIONS [XRACs] AND DIGESTS; TECHNOLOGIES OR APPLICATIONS FOR MITIGATION OR ADAPTATION AGAINSTCLIMATE CHANGE

In an example, a shared uncore memory fabric of a system-on-a-chip (SoC) is configured to provide real-time power management. The SoC may include a power management agent to inform the shared fabric that the processing cores and peripherals will be idle for a time, and to negotiate a power-saving state. The uncore fabric may also include a local power manager that detects when no access requests have been received for a time, such as when cores are operating from cache. The shared fabric may then unilaterally enter a power-saving state, and remain in that state until an access request is received. In the power-saving state, power and/or clocks are gated, and the fabric's state is stored in retention cells. When a new access request is received, an ungated controller may handle preliminary processing while the local power manager restores the state and powers up the shared fabric.