Apple patent involves energy conservation and processors
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
May 6, 2008 at 5:35am
An Apple patent (number 7370216) for conserving power by reducing voltage supplied to an instruction-processing portion of a processor has appeared at the U.S. Patent & Trademark Office. It relates to techniques for conserving power usage in computer systems.
More specifically, the present invention relates to a method and an apparatus for reducing power consumption in a processor by reducing voltage supplied to an instruction-processing portion of the processor, while maintaining voltage to other portions of the processor.
According to Apple, one embodiment of the present invention provides a system that facilitates reducing static power consumption of a processor. During operation, the system receives a signal indicating that instruction execution within the processor is to be temporarily halted. In response to this signal, the system halts an instruction-processing portion of the processor, and reduces the voltage supplied to the instruction-processing portion of the processor. Full voltage is maintained to a remaining portion of the processor, so that the remaining portion of the processor can continue to operate while the instruction-processing portion of the processor is in reduced power mode.
The inventor is Lynn R. Youngs.
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 10,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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