Active management of timing guardband to save energy in POWER7

Microprocessor voltage levels include substantial margin to deal with process variation, system power supply variation, workload induced thermal and voltage variation, aging, random uncertainty, and test inaccuracy. This margin allows the microprocessor to operate correctly during worst-case conditions, but during typical conditions it is larger than necessary and wastes energy. We present a mechanism that reduces excess voltage margin by (1) introducing a critical path monitor (CPM) circuit that measures available timing margin in real-time, (2) coupling the CPM output to the clock generation circuit to adjust clock frequency within cycles in response to excess or inadequate timing margin, and (3) adjusting the processor voltage level periodically in firmware to achieve a specified average clock frequency target. We implemented this mechanism in a prototype IBM POWER7 server. During better-than-worst case conditions our guardband management mechanism reduces the average voltage setting 137-152 mV below nominal, resulting in average processor power reduction of 24% with no performance loss while running industry-standard benchmarks.