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Vol. 3B 14-11

POWER AND THERMAL MANAGEMENT

Bits 11:0, See Section 14.7.5.2.

Current Limit Status (bit 12, RO) — If set (1), indicates an electrical current limit (e.g. Electrical Design 
Point/IccMax) is being exceeded and is adversely impacting energy efficiency optimizations.

Current Limit Log (bit 13, RWC0) — If set (1), an electrical current limit has been exceeded that has 
adversely impacted energy efficiency optimizations since the last clearing of this bit or a reset. This bit is sticky, 
software may clear this bit by writing a zero (0).

Cross-domain Limit Status (bit 14, RO) — If set (1), indicates another hardware domain (e.g. processor 
graphics) is currently limiting energy efficiency optimizations in the processor core domain.

Cross-domain Limit Log (bit 15, RWC0) — If set (1), indicates another hardware domain (e.g. processor 
graphics) has limited energy efficiency optimizations in the processor core domain since the last clearing of this 
bit or a reset. This bit is sticky, software may clear this bit by writing a zero (0).

Bits 63:16, See Section 14.7.5.2.

14.4.5.1   Non-Architectural HWP Feedback

The Productive Performance (MSR_PPERF) MSR (non-architectural) provides hardware's view of workload scal-
ability, which is a rough assessment of the relationship between frequency and workload performance, to software. 
The layout of the MSR_PPERF is shown in Figure 14-10

PCNT (bits 63:0, RO) — Similar to IA32_APERF but only counts cycles perceived by hardware as contributing 
to instruction execution (e.g. unhalted and unstalled cycles). This counter increments at the same rate as 
IA32_APERF, where the ratio of (ΔPCNT/ΔACNT) is an indicator of workload scalability (0% to 100%). Note that 

values in this register are valid even when HWP is not enabled. 

14.4.6 HWP 

Notifications

Processors may support interrupt-based notification of changes to HWP status as indicated by CPUID. If supported, 
the IA32_HWP_INTERRUPT MSR is used to enable interrupt-based notifications. Notification events, when enabled, 
are delivered using the existing thermal LVT entry. The layout of the IA32_HWP_INTERRUPT is shown in 
Figure 14-11. The bit fields are described below:

EN_Guaranteed_Performance_Change (bit 0, RW) — When set (1), an HWP Interrupt will be generated 
whenever a change to the IA32_HWP_CAPABILITIES.Guaranteed_Performance occurs. The default value is 0 
(Interrupt generation is disabled). 

Figure 14-10.  MSR_PPERF MSR

Figure 14-11.  IA32_HWP_INTERRUPT MSR

63

0

PCNT - Productive Performance Count

63

0

Reserved

1

2

EN_Excursion_Minimum
EN_Guaranteed_Performance_Change