BACKGROUND

1. Technical Field

This disclosure generally relates to power management for an integrated circuit and more particularly, but not exclusively, to the identification of a power state to be provided with a system-on-chip.

2. Background Art

In a system-on-chip (SOC), circuit components of the SOC are integrated on a single chip. SOC integrated circuits are becoming ever more popular in various applications including embedded applications such as with set-top-boxes, mobile phones, portable media devices, and so on. While the high integration of components in an SOC provides advantages such as chip area savings and better signal quality, power consumption and performance latency are becoming increasingly important constraints for devices that include such SOCs. Especially with portable SOC applications, efficient power management functionality is a valuable aspect of many SOC implementations.

With successive generations of integrated circuit technologies, the number, variety, and capabilities of SOCs continue to grow. As a result, there is expected to be an increasing premium placed on incremental improvements to how power efficiencies are provided by next-generation SOCs, and by SOCs which are already in use.

