Are you an EPFL student looking for a semester project?
Work with us on data science and visualisation projects, and deploy your project as an app on top of GraphSearch.
Concept
Processor power dissipation
Summary
Processor power dissipation or processing unit power dissipation is the process in which computer processors consume electrical energy, and dissipate this energy in the form of heat due to the resistance in the electronic circuits.
Variable TDP
Designing CPUs that perform tasks efficiently without overheating is a major consideration of nearly all CPU manufacturers to date. Historically, early CPUs implemented with vacuum tubes consumed power on the order of many kilowatts. Current CPUs in general-purpose personal computers, such as desktops and laptops, consume power in the order of tens to hundreds of watts. Some other CPU implementations use very little power; for example, the CPUs in mobile phones often use just a few watts of electricity, while some microcontrollers used in embedded systems may consume only a few milliwatts or even as little as a few microwatts.
There are a number of engineering reasons for this pattern:
For a given CPU core, energy usage will scale up as its clock rate increases. Reducing the clock rate or undervolting usually reduces energy consumption; it is also possible to undervolt the microprocessor while keeping the clock rate the same.
New features generally require more transistors, each of which uses power. Turning unused areas off saves energy, such as through clock gating.
As a processor model's design matures, smaller transistors, lower-voltage structures, and design experience may reduce energy consumption.
Processor manufacturers usually release two power consumption numbers for a CPU:
typical thermal power, which is measured under normal load (for instance, AMD's average CPU power)
maximum thermal power, which is measured under a worst-case load
For example, the Pentium 4 2.8 GHz has a 68.4 W typical thermal power and 85 W maximum thermal power. When the CPU is idle, it will draw far less than the typical thermal power. Datasheets normally contain the thermal design power (TDP), which is the maximum amount of heat generated by the CPU, which the cooling system in a computer is required to dissipate.
Official source
About this result
This page is automatically generated and may contain information that is not correct, complete, up-to-date, or relevant to your search query. The same applies to every other page on this website. Please make sure to verify the information with EPFL's official sources.