Techniques to enable communication between a processor and voltage regulator

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-10761580-B2
Application number	US-201816227103-A
Country	US
Kind code	B2
Filing date	Dec 20, 2018
Priority date	Sep 29, 2016
Publication date	Sep 1, 2020
Grant date	Sep 1, 2020

Abstract

In one embodiment, a processor includes: a plurality of cores; a first storage to store parameter information for a voltage regulator to couple to the processor via a voltage regulator interface; and a power controller to control power consumption of the processor. The power controller may determine a performance state for one or more cores of the processor and include a hardware logic to generate a message for the voltage regulator based at least in part on the parameter information, where this message is to cause the voltage regulator to output a voltage to enable the one or more cores to operate at the performance state. Other embodiments are described and claimed.

First claim

What is claimed is:

1. A processor comprising:
a multi-chip package comprising:
a first die comprising at least a first core;
a second die comprising at least a second core;
a first storage to store parameter information for a voltage regulator to couple to the processor, the parameter information comprising interface information regarding the voltage regulator, and one or more electrical configuration parameters of a platform including the processor;
a voltage regulator interface to couple the processor to the voltage regulator; and
a power controller to control power consumption of the processor, the power controller to determine a performance state for one or more cores and including a first logic to generate a message for the voltage regulator based at least in part on the parameter information, the message to cause the voltage regulator to output a voltage to enable the one or more cores to operate at the performance state.

2. The processor of claim 1 , wherein the interface information includes one or more of interface speed, encoding information, and address information.

3. The processor of claim 1 , wherein the processor is to couple to the voltage regulator via the voltage regulator interface, the voltage regulator interface comprising a non-proprietary bus.

4. The processor of claim 3 , wherein the non-proprietary bus comprises an inter-integrated circuit (I 2 C) bus.

5. The processor of claim 1 , wherein the first logic is to enable a voltage identifier associated with the voltage to be encoded into voltage information of the message.

6. The processor of claim 1 , further comprising:
a first domain comprising at least the first core of the first die; and
a second domain comprising at least the second core of the second die.

7. The processor of claim 6 , further comprising an interconnect to couple the first domain to the second domain.

8. The processor of claim 6 , further comprising a third die comprising non-core circuitry, wherein the non-core circuitry comprises the power controller.

9. The processor of claim 8 , wherein the non-core circuitry comprises one or more interfaces.

10. The processor of claim 6 , further comprising a first interface comprising a Peripheral Component Interconnect Express (PCIe) interface.

11. The processor of claim 10 , further comprising a second interface to couple to a graphics engine.

12. The processor of claim 1 , wherein the first core comprises at least one instruction cache and at least one data cache.

13. The processor of claim 12 , wherein the first core comprises at least one integer execution unit and at least one floating point unit.

14. The processor of claim 1 , further comprising a third die comprising a graphics engine.

15. A method comprising:
obtaining, in a control logic of a processor, parameter information for an interface that is to couple the processor to a voltage regulator, the parameter information including encoding information to indicate an encoding for a voltage request to be communicated to the voltage regulator and comprising interface information regarding the voltage regulator and one or more electrical configuration parameters of a platform including the processor, the processor comprising a multi-chip package including a first die comprising at least a first core and a second die comprising at least a second core; and
storing the parameter information in a first storage of the processor, to enable a power controller of the processor to access the parameter information.

16. The method of claim 15 , further comprising obtaining the parameter information from a secure non-volatile storage of the platform.

17. The method of claim 15 , further comprising:
determining a voltage for a performance state of the first core;
accessing at least some of the parameter information in the first storage; and
encoding the voltage into an encoded voltage value based on the at least some of the parameter information.

18. A system comprising:
a voltage regulator to provide at least one voltage to a processor;
an interface to couple the voltage regulator to the processor; and
the processor comprising a multi-chip package comprising a first die having at least a first core, a second die having at least a second core, a first storage to store parameter information for the voltage regulator, and a power controller to control power consumption of the processor, wherein the power controller is to determine a performance state for the first core and generate a message for communication to the voltage regulator having an address of the voltage regulator and an offset to a location within the voltage regulator in which voltage information is to be stored based at least in part on the parameter information, wherein in response to the message the voltage regulator is to output a voltage to enable the first core to operate at the performance state.

19. The system of claim 18 , further comprising a non-volatile storage coupled to the processor to store the parameter information for the voltage regulator, wherein the processor is to receive the parameter information from the non-volatile storage during a boot process.

20. The system of claim 18 , wherein the power controller is to calculate a time duration for the voltage regulator to ramp to the voltage based on at least some of the parameter information, and enable the first core to operate at the performance state after the time duration.

Assignees

• Intel Corp

Inventors

• Suryanarayanan Anupama
• Ananthakrishnan Avinash N
• Ashok Chinmay
• Shrall Jeremy J

Classifications

• G06F2213/0016

  Inter-integrated circuit (I2C) · CPC title

• G06F13/4282

  on a serial bus, e.g. I2C bus, SPI bus (on daisy chain buses G06F13/4247) · CPC title

• G06F1/3296

  by lowering the supply or operating voltage · CPC title

• G06F30/00

  Computer-aided design [CAD] · CPC title

• G06F2119/06

  Power analysis or power optimisation · CPC title