Re: Why do CPUs run hotter...?


krw wrote:
In article <1150707795.535043.280960@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
irwin@xxxxxx says...

krw wrote:


It's called *HALT*, and has been done for at least a decade.


Only on decent preemptive OS's, a decade ago most users were still
using W95 ;-)

Not true. Win95 will HALT also. ...and it's not a decent OS.


Sorry, I meant Win3.1, not that it made much difference because the W95
systems of a decade ago mostly ran software built to the old API, the
OS could halt but did not know **when** :-;


Note that HALT is only part of a strategy. HALT can be used in the idle
task of a CPU, but there is also the possibility of reducing clocks
when the load is light, which is not the same thing is it :-/

One can also modulate the power supply, but these topics weren't at
issue.

Disagree, I am not talking about tweaking of the sort that overclockers
do, I am talking about the possibilities the OS has to reconfigure on
the fly to alter the performance vs consumption ratio.

BTW, another point is that the FP pipelines consume less when they are
empty ;-)

.