Fan control for determining a fan speed that is closer to an optimal fan speed based on an amount of measured change in system power consumption and temperature of a processor

摘要

In general, in one aspect, the disclosure describes running a cooling fan within a computer at low speed while the computer is in low temperature operations (e.g., idle). The operation of the cooling fan may reduce CPU temperature enough to decrease CPU leakage power, offsetting the power consumption of the fan, and possibly resulting in a net system power reduction. The benefit at the platform level increases further when considering the low efficiency of voltage regulation (VR) in this lower power regime, and potentially reductions in other components (e.g., graphics processor). The optimal fan speed is the speed at which the overall system power is reduced the most (e.g., CPU power savings is greater than fan power utilized). The optimal temperature may be determined dynamically during operation or may be determined in manufacturing and applied statically during operation.

主权项

1. A device comprising:
logic to at least partially determine a substantially optimal speed for a fan, the fan to comprise at least a portion of a cooling solution for a processor in a computer system, wherein the logic is to: measure the computer system power consumption and a temperature of the processor while the fan is operating at a first fan speed change the speed of the fan to a second fan speed; measure the computer system power consumption and the temperature of the processor at a time after the speed of the fan has been changed to the second fan speed; determine whether the first fan speed or the second fan speed is closer to the substantially optimal speed for the fan based, at least in part, on an amount of measured change in the computer system power consumption and the temperature of the processor at the first fan speed and the second fan speed.