Various mechanisms exist for power management in a platform. However, existing power management techniques require a process or agent to have access to all components to be managed.
Existing multi-processor platforms may have processors, devices and/or memory partitioned. One platform may then behave as two computing devices. A platform may have multiple processors with hardware partitioning so that the platform may act as multiple machines with multiple operating systems. There may be only a single motherboard on the platform.
Power utilization of platforms is becoming more important. It is desirable to minimize or optimize the power that a platform or set of platforms utilize. As partitioning becomes more prevalent, it may become desirable to manage the power utilization of the various partitions of a system and the system overall.
However, partitioning has traditionally been performed in enterprise-class machines, such as servers, and other large-size deployed machines. Power utilization has become more important as more machines are used in one location. Environmental concerns are now an issue. For instance, it may not be possible to co-locate enough compute power and maintain an appropriately cooled environment. The air conditioning unit may not be able to handle the heat dissipation of that much power utilization. With the multi-core and mini-core deployments planned for the future, many usage models require partitioning. It is becoming more common for platforms to comprise more than one processor. Further, other devices are often present in multiples within the platform.
Portions of a system may be sequestered, for partitioning. Power management in an existing system may use an agent that can monitor the processor burden rate (busy time), control throttling, etc. The agent is typically in control of the platform, but when resources are sequestered, the agent no longer maintains control of the sequestered resources. If the agent cannot see a resource, the agent can no longer manage that resource. Thus, the traditional power management schemes are no longer viable solutions for partitioned platforms with sequestering.