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 conserv ...

technologies built into some

AMD Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD) is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California and maintains significant operations in Austin, Texas. AMD is a hardware and fabless company that de ...

GPUs A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed for digital image processing and to accelerate computer graphics, being present either as a discrete video card or embedded on motherboards, mobile phones, personal ...

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 Clock rate or clock speed in computing typically refers to the frequency at which the clock generator of a processor can generate pulses used to synchronize the operations of its components. It is used as an indicator of the processor's ...

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 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 in 2014 shows, AMD's x86-64 SMU firmware is executed on some LatticeMico32 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 computing applications that processes data and events that have critically defined time constraints. A RTOS is distinct from a time-sharing operating system, such as Unix ...

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 Radeon () is a brand of computer products, including graphics processing units, random-access memory, RAM disk software, and solid-state drives, produced by Radeon Technologies Group, a division of AMD. The brand was launched in 2000 by ATI Tech ...

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

AnandTech ''AnandTech'' was an online computer hardware magazine owned by Future plc. It was founded in April 1997 by then-14-year-old Anand Lal Shimpi, who was CEO and editor-in-chief until August 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 was Nvidia's GeForce 600 series (also manufactured at TS ...

, 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 journalism, technology-news and -opinion web site, founded in 2009 by Charlie Demerjian (journalist), Charlie Demerjian after his departure from ''The Inquirer''. The site lists as its c ...

Operating system support

AMD Catalyst is available for

Microsoft Windows Windows is a Product lining, product line of Proprietary software, proprietary graphical user interface, graphical operating systems developed and marketed by Microsoft. It is grouped into families and subfamilies that cater to particular sec ...

and

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

and support AMD PowerTune. 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