AMD PowerTune is a series of

dynamic frequency scaling Dynamic frequency scaling (also known as CPU throttling) is a power management technique in computer architecture whereby the frequency of a microprocessor can be automatically adjusted "on the fly" depending on the actual needs, to conserve ...

technologies built into some

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational semiconductor company based in Santa Clara, California, that develops computer processors and related technologies for business and consumer markets. While it initially manufactur ...

GPUs A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobil ...

and

APUs Apus is a small constellation in the Southern Celestial Hemisphere, southern sky. It represents a bird-of-paradise, and its name means "without feet" in Greek language, Greek because the bird-of-paradise was once wrongly believed to lack feet. ...

that allow the

clock speed In computing, the clock rate or clock speed typically refers to the frequency at which the clock generator of a processor can generate pulses, which are used to synchronize the operations of its components, and is used as an indicator of the pr ...

of the processor to be dynamically changed (to different ''P-states'') by software. This allows the processor to meet the instantaneous performance needs of the operation being performed, while minimizing power draw, heat generation and noise avoidance. AMD PowerTune aims to solve

thermal design power The thermal design power (TDP), sometimes called thermal design point, is the maximum amount of heat generated by a computer chip or component (often a CPU, GPU or system on a chip) that the cooling system in a computer is designed to dissipate ...

and performance constraints. Besides the reduced energy consumption, AMD PowerTune helps to lower the noise levels created by the cooling in desktop computers, and extends battery life in mobile devices. AMD PowerTune is the successor to AMD PowerPlay. Support for "PowerPlay" was added to the Linux kernel driver "amdgpu" on November 11, 2015. As a lecture from

CCC CCC may refer to: Arts and entertainment * Canada's Capital Cappies, the Critics and Awards Program in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada * ''Capcom Classics Collection'', a 2005 compilation of arcade games for the PlayStation 2 and Xbox * CCC, the pro ...

in 2014 shows, AMD's x86-64 SMU firmware is executed on some

LatticeMico32 LatticeMico32 is a 32-bit microprocessor reduced instruction set computer (RISC) soft core from Lattice Semiconductor optimized for field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). It uses a Harvard architecture, which means the instruction and data buses a ...

and PowerTune was modeled using Matlab. This is similar to Nvidia's PDAEMON, the

RTOS A real-time operating system (RTOS) is an operating system (OS) for real-time applications that processes data and events that have critically defined time constraints. An RTOS is distinct from a time-sharing operating system, such as Unix, which ...

responsible for power on their GPUs.

Overview

AMD PowerTune was introduced in the TeraScale 3 (VLIW4) with Radeon HD 6900 on 15 December 2010 and has been available in different development stages on Radeon- and

AMD FirePro AMD FirePro was AMD's brand of graphics cards designed for use in workstations and servers running professional Computer-aided design (CAD), Computer-generated imagery (CGI), Digital content creation (DCC), and High-performance computing/ GP ...

-branded products ever since. Over the years, reviews which document the development of AMD PowerTune have been published by

AnandTech ''AnandTech'' is an online computer hardware magazine owned by Future plc. It was founded in 1997 by then-14-year-old Anand Lal Shimpi, who served as CEO and editor-in-chief until August 30, 2014, with Ryan Smith replacing him as editor-in-chief ...

. An additional technology named

AMD ZeroCore Power Graphics Core Next (GCN) is the codename for a series of microarchitectures and an instruction set architecture that were developed by AMD for its GPUs as the successor to its TeraScale microarchitecture. The first product featuring GCN was lau ...

has been available since the

Radeon HD 7000 Series The Radeon HD 7000 series, codenamed "Southern Islands", is a family of GPUs developed by AMD, and manufactured on TSMC's 28 nm process. The primary competitor of Southern Islands, Nvidia's GeForce 600 Series (also manufactured at TSMC), ...

, implementing the

Graphics Core Next Graphics Core Next (GCN) is the codename for a series of microarchitectures and an instruction set architecture that were developed by AMD for its GPUs as the successor to its TeraScale microarchitecture. The first product featuring GCN was lau ...

microarchitecture. The pointlessness of a fixed clock frequency was accredited in January 2014 by

SemiAccurate ''SemiAccurate'' (S, A in short) is a U.S.-based technology-news and -opinion web site, founded in 2009 by Charlie Demerjian after his departure from ''The Inquirer''. The site lists as its contributors: Charlie Demerjian (the site's founder), T ...

Operating system support

AMD Catalyst AMD Radeon Software is a device driver and utility software package for AMD's graphics cards and APUs. Its graphical user interface is built with Electron and is compatible with 64-bit Windows and Linux distributions. Software bundle Fun ...

is available for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a group of several proprietary graphical operating system families developed and marketed by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. For example, Windows NT for consumers, Windows Server for serv ...

and

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

and supports AMD PowerTune since version. The free and open-source "Radeon" graphics device driver has some support for AMD PowerTune, see "Enduro".

Feature overview for AMD APUs

Feature overview for AMD graphics cards

References

External links