Providing hardware resources having different reliabilities for use by an application

摘要

Power management functionality is described for implementing an application in an energy-efficient manner, without substantially degrading overall performance of the application. The functionality operates by identifying at least first data and second data associated with the application. The first data is considered to have a greater potential impact on performance of the application compared to the second data. The functionality then instructs a first set of hardware-level resources to handle the first data and a second set of hardware-level resources to handle the second data. The first set of hardware-level resources has a higher reliability compared to the second set of hardware-level resources. In one case, the first and second hardware-level resources comprise DRAM memory units. Here, the first set of hardware-level resources achieves greater reliability than the second set of hardware-level resources by being refreshed at a higher rate than the second set of hardware-level resources.

主权项

1. A method, implemented by computing functionality, for executing an application, the method comprising:
identifying at least first data and second data associated with the application, corruption of the first data having a first impact on a performance of the application, and corruption of the second data having a second impact on the performance of the application, the first impact being assessed as less preferable than the second impact based on at least one assessment factor; allocating virtual pages of memory to the first data and the second data; using an operating system page table to map the virtual pages of memory to physical pages of memory storing the first data and the second data, wherein the operating system page table maps a first virtual page of memory to a first physical page of memory storing the first data and a second virtual page of memory to a second physical page of memory storing the second data; and instructing at least one memory unit to refresh the first physical page of memory storing the first data at a first rate and to refresh the second physical page or memory storing the second data at a second rate.