Thermal Management for Immersive Workloads in Portable Devices
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Solution Overview
Problem
Portable computing devices (PCDs) face challenges in managing thermal energy during immersive multimedia use cases like virtual reality, leading to frame drops and reduced frame rates due to inadequate thermal mitigation methods that impact user experience.
Innovation Solution
The system intelligently adjusts performance settings of processing components to reduce power consumption and mitigate thermal energy generation without affecting user experience, by monitoring sensor measurements and using profile graphs to identify optimal adjustments that minimize thermal events.
Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles
Engineering Contradiction Analysis
1Object-generated harmful factors
If voltage and frequency of components are throttled to reduce thermal energy generation, then thermal energy generation is reduced, but processing speed and frame rate decrease causing user motion sickness
Solution Approach 1:
The system dynamically changes operational parameters (voltage, frequency, workload allocation) of processing components based on real-time thermal conditions and use case requirements. By adjusting these parameters intelligently, the system reduces thermal energy generation while maintaining sufficient processing speed to prevent frame drops and motion sickness in immersive multimedia applications.
Solution Approach 2:
The thermal management system transitions from static throttling to dynamic adjustment, continuously monitoring thermal conditions and adapting component performance settings in real-time. This dynamic approach allows the system to optimize the balance between thermal energy generation and processing speed, ensuring frame rate maintenance during immersive multimedia workloads while preventing thermal degradation.
2Object-generated harmful factors
If processing workload is reduced to mitigate thermal events, then thermal energy generation is reduced, but frame rate decreases impacting user experience
Solution Approach 1:
Instead of reducing processing workload, the system changes operational parameters (voltage, frequency) of components to reduce thermal energy generation. This allows the full processing workload to be maintained, ensuring frame rate requirements are met while still achieving thermal mitigation through parameter optimization rather than workload reduction.
3Temperature
If passive cooling devices are added to mitigate thermal degradation, then thermal management is improved, but device size and component space increase
Solution Approach 1:
The system extracts the active cooling function (fans) from the device design, relying instead on optimized passive cooling through intelligent parameter adjustment. By removing the need for active cooling components and optimizing thermal management through parameter changes, the system maintains effective thermal control while preserving compact device size and maximizing component space.
Solution Approach 2:
The system enables the processing components to self-regulate their thermal output through intelligent parameter adjustment. By monitoring thermal conditions and automatically adjusting voltage and frequency settings, the components manage their own thermal generation without requiring additional active cooling devices, thereby maintaining compact form factor.
Data Source
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AI summary
Disclosed are methods and systems for intelligent adjustment of an immersive multimedia workload in a portable computing device ("PCD"), such as a virtual reality ("VR") or augmented reality ("AR") workload. An exemplary embodiment monitors one or more performance indicators comprising a motion to photon latency associated with the immersive multimedia workload. Performance parameters associated with thermally aggressive processing components are adjusted to reduce demand for power while ensuring that the motion to photon latency is and/or remains optimized. Performance parameters that may be adjusted include, but are not limited to including, eye buffer resolution, eye buffer MSAA, timewarp CAC, eye buffer FPS, display FPS, timewarp output resolution, textures LOD, 6DOF camera FPS, and fovea size.