Using drowsy cores to lower power in multicore SoCs

Cody Croxton, Ben Eckermann and David Lapp
EETimes (6/29/2011 2:18 PM EDT)

Freescale engineers describe a cascading power management technique that steers tasks to a smaller number of cores during non-peak activity periods so that the idle cores can enter a minimal-power or “drowsy” state. Multicore processing has enabled higher and higher levels of processing capability, but with a price: higher levels of power consumption. Cascading power management is a technique that steers tasks to a smaller number of cores during non-peak activity periods so that the idle cores can enter a minimal-power or “drowsy” state.

When packet traffic increases again, the technique allows a rapid return to fully loaded conditions. Cascading power management is not simply a power-saving technique; it is also a workload management technique that distributes packet processing in a more efficient way.

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