Adaptive cooling of computing devices

Patent metadata

Field	Value
Publication number	US-2016011607-A1
Application number	US-201514675300-A
Country	US
Kind code	A1
Filing date	Mar 31, 2015
Priority date	Jul 11, 2014
Publication date	Jan 14, 2016
Grant date	—

Abstract

This document relates to thermal management of computing devices. One example determines a cooling state associated with a computing device that has hardware resources including a processor and another hardware resource. The example also determines hardware utilization states of the computing device, including a processor utilization state and another hardware utilization state associated with the another hardware resource. The example also estimates a thermal impact on the computing device of operating in the cooling state and the hardware utilization states.

First claim

1 . A system comprising:
a hardware processing unit; and a hardware storage device storing instructions which, when executed by the hardware processing unit, cause the hardware processing unit to:
measure cooling states associated with a computing device at various times, the computing device having hardware resources including a processor, a memory device, and a storage device;
determine hardware utilization states of the computing devices at the various times, the hardware utilization states including a processor utilization state associated with the processor, a memory utilization state associated with the memory device, and a storage utilization state associated with the storage device;
measure thermal impacts on the computing device of operating in the cooling states and hardware utilization states; and
model the thermal impacts as a function of the cooling states and the hardware utilization states.

2 . The system of claim 1 , wherein the hardware utilization states include a network utilization state associated with a network device of the computing device.

3 . The system of claim 2 , wherein the instructions, when executed, cause the hardware processing unit to:
model the thermal impacts by employing a regression algorithm to determine a first coefficient for the processor utilization state, a second coefficient for the memory utilization state, a third coefficient for the storage utilization state, and a fourth coefficient for the network utilization state.

4 . A system comprising:
a hardware processing unit; and a hardware storage device storing instructions which, when executed by the hardware processing unit, cause the hardware processing unit to:
determine a cooling state associated with a computing device, the computing device having hardware resources including a processor and another hardware resource;
determine hardware utilization states of the computing device, the hardware utilization states including a processor utilization state and another hardware utilization state associated with the another hardware resource;
estimate a thermal impact on the computing device of operating in the cooling state and the hardware utilization states.

5 . The system of claim 4 , wherein the instructions, when executed, cause the hardware processing unit to:
adjust a cooling resource based on the estimated thermal impact.

6 . The system of claim 5 , wherein the cooling resource is a local computing device fan.

7 . The system of claim 6 , embodied as a dedicated cooling control circuit on the individual computing device or as a separate computing device.

8 . The system of claim 4 , wherein the another hardware resource is a memory device and the another hardware utilization state reflects transfer rates over a memory bus used to communicate between the processor and the memory device.

9 . The system of claim 4 , wherein the another hardware resource is a storage device and the another hardware utilization state reflects transfer rates over a storage bus used to communicate between the processor and the storage device.

10 . The system of claim 4 , wherein the another hardware resource is a network device and the another hardware utilization state reflects transfer rates over a network bus used to communicate between the processor and the network device.

11 . A method comprising
determining a cooling state associated with a computing device, the computing device having hardware resources including a processor and at least one of a memory device, a storage device, or a network device; identifying a program configuration for the computing device, the program configuration including a first executable program running on the computing device concurrently with a second executable program; determining hardware utilization characteristics of the program configuration, the hardware utilization characteristics including a processor utilization characteristic and a data transfer characteristic of the program configuration, the data transfer characteristic reflecting data transfers by the memory device, the storage device, or the network device; and estimating a thermal impact of operating the program configuration on the computing device when the computing device is in the cooling state.

12 . The method of claim 11 , wherein the processor includes a first core and a second core and the program configuration includes a first executable program running on the first core and a second executable program running on the second core.

13 . The method of claim 12 , wherein the determining the hardware utilization characteristics of the program configuration comprises:
executing the first executable program and the second executable program together on the processor; and determining the processor utilization characteristic based on an average processor utilization state of the processor when the first executable program and the second executable program are both running on the processor.

14 . The method of claim 12 , wherein the determining the hardware utilization characteristics of the program configuration comprises:
executing the first executable program and the second executable program together on the processor; and determining the data transfer characteristic based on an average memory utilization state when the first executable program and the second executable program are both running on the processor.

15 . The method of claim 12 , wherein the determining the hardware utilization characteristics of the program configuration comprises:
executing the first executable program and the second executable program together on the processor; and determining the data transfer characteristic based on an average storage utilization state when the first executable program and the second executable program are both running on the processor.

16 . The method of claim 12 , wherein the determining the hardware utilization characteristics of the program configuration comprises:
executing the first executable program and the second executable program together on the processor; and determining the data transfer characteristic based on an average network utilization state when the first executable program and the second executable program are both running on the processor.

17 . The method of claim 11 , further comprising:
prior to executing the program configuration on the computing device, adjusting a cooling resource based on the estimated thermal impact.

18 . The method of claim 17 , wherein the cooling resource is an individual computing device fan, a container fan, or an air handler fan.

19 . The method of claim 17 , wherein the cooling resource includes a pump or a valve that directs fluid to cool the computing device.

20 . The method of claim 11 , further comprising:
adjusting workload on the computing device by selecting another program configuration to run on the computing device, the another program configuration being selected based on another estimated thermal impact of the another program configuration.

Assignees

• Microsoft Technology Licensing Llc

Inventors

• James Sean
• Liu Jie
• Janous Brian
• Mcknight Gregory Joseph
• Bianchini Ricardo

Classifications

• G05B15/02

  electric · CPC title

• G05D23/19 Primary

  characterised by the use of electric means {(G05D23/1393 takes precedence)} · CPC title

• H05K7/20 Primary

  Modifications to facilitate cooling, ventilating, or heating · CPC title