Temperature prediction for multi-core microprocessors with application to Dynamic Thermal Management

Temperature is among the most important factors limiting CPU performance. To ensure stable and reliable operation temperature has to be limited. In this paper we present a method for predicting temperature of a multi-core microprocessor based on it´s high-level thermal model. Temperature prediction is then utilised in a Dynamic Thermal Management algorithm that can exploit performance optimisation opportunities while ensuring operation below temperature limit. The DTM algorithm uses frequency and voltage scaling of the CPU cores and task migration and was evaluated on a physical computer with a quad-core CPU.