From: The Proceedings of the First IBM P=ac2 Conference, October 6-8, 2004,IBM T.J. Watson Research Center, Yorktown Heights, NY, USA. Copyright 2004, A.K. Uht and R.J. Vaccaro. TEAPC: Adaptive Computing and Underclocking in a Real PC Augustus K. Uht and Richard J. Vaccaro University of Rhode Island Microarchitecture Research Institute Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering 4 East Alumni Ave. Kingston, RI 02864, USA {
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[email protected]} real-time internal temperature. Since this is the major Abstract component of variation of timing within an Intel TEAPC is an IBM/Intel-standard PC realization of microprocessor (the CPU’s core voltage is highly the TEAtime performance “maximizing” adaptive regulated and approximately constant), it mirrors the computing algorithm, giving performance beyond original TEAtime philosophy. Further, it is possible worst-case-specifications. TEAPC goes beyond the to base the real-time performance on the real-time TEAtime algorithm by adapting to the current CPU power consumption of the entire PC; the latter is load. It is also the first machine to use extensive partially addressed in this paper. underclocking for disaster tolerance, low power consumption and high reliability. This is all done We have implemented the entire control system in dynamically, at runtime, on an unmodified standard software, in a Windows application. It runs in a operating system (Windows 2000) with a purely normal application mode on Windows 2000, software-implemented feedback-control based multitasking normally with other applications. CPU algorithm. frequency and core voltage are changed dynamically, based on the output of a feedback control system 1 Introduction using the CPU chip temperature as its primary input.