Apple patent involves energy conservation and processors
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
May 6, 2008 at 10:35am
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.
Article Information
Comment on this Article Print this Article Email this Article Digg This
Contributor
Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 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.
Recent Articles
