IPU Workload Distribution for SLA-Aware Stage Migration

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Solution Overview

Problem

Time-sensitive applications face challenges in meeting service level agreements (SLAs) due to hardware oversubscription, leading to inefficient use of resources and potential catastrophic failures, while software-managed platforms struggle to effectively monitor and manage SLAs across hardware resources.

Innovation Solution

Implementing infrastructure processing units (IPUs) with tracking, migration, and telemetry circuitry to monitor workload stages, predict SLA violations, and dynamically allocate or migrate workload stages to available resources across systems, ensuring timely completion without impacting execution.

Engineering Contradictions & Design Principles

VSEngineering Contradiction Analysis

1Productivity

If hardware resources are oversubscribed to increase productivity, then resource utilization improves, but service level agreement compliance deteriorates

Engineering Contradiction:
Improveresource utilizationVSAvoidservice level agreement compliance
Core Design Contradiction:
ProductivityVSReliability

Solution Approach 1:

The system performs preliminary actions by predicting SLA violations before they occur. The prediction circuitry analyzes current workload stages and resource allocation to forecast potential SLA breaches, allowing the system to proactively reallocate resources or migrate workload stages before the violation happens, thus maintaining both high resource utilization and SLA compliance

Inventive Principle:
Principle #10Preliminary action

Solution Approach 2:

The system implements continuous feedback loops where monitoring circuitry tracks actual workload execution and resource usage, comparison circuitry compares this against SLA requirements, and prediction circuitry uses this feedback to anticipate future violations. This closed-loop feedback enables dynamic adjustment of resource allocation to maintain SLA compliance while maximizing productivity

Inventive Principle:
Principle #23Feedback

2Speed

If workload stages are distributed across multiple compute devices to improve performance, then processing speed increases, but system complexity increases

Engineering Contradiction:
Improveprocessing speedVSAvoidsystem complexity
Core Design Contradiction:
SpeedVSDevice complexity

Solution Approach 1:

The patent introduces an infrastructure processing unit (IPU) as an intermediary between the distributed workload stages and hardware resources. The IPU centralizes the complex functions of monitoring, predicting, and managing workload distribution across multiple compute devices, thereby enabling high processing speed through parallelization while containing system complexity within the IPU rather than spreading it across all components

Inventive Principle:
Principle #24Intermediary (Mediator)

Solution Approach 2:

The system implements self-service mechanisms where the prediction and migration circuitry autonomously manage workload distribution without requiring external intervention. The system automatically monitors its own state, predicts potential SLA violations, and executes migrations or resource reallocations independently, reducing the operational complexity of managing distributed workloads

Inventive Principle:
Principle #25Self-service

3Adaptability or versatility

If software-managed platforms are used to monitor SLAs, then flexibility improves, but monitoring effectiveness deteriorates

Engineering Contradiction:
ImproveflexibilityVSAvoidmonitoring effectiveness
Core Design Contradiction:
Adaptability or versatilityVSMeasurement precision

Solution Approach 1:

The patent replaces software-managed monitoring with hardware-based monitoring circuitry integrated into the infrastructure processing unit. This hardware implementation provides precise, deterministic measurement of workload stage execution and resource allocation, eliminating the inefficiencies and limited precision of software-based monitoring while maintaining flexibility through configurable monitoring parameters

Inventive Principle:
Principle #28Mechanics substitution (Replace mechanical system)

Solution Approach 2:

The monitoring function is segmented into dedicated hardware circuitry within the IPU that specifically monitors infrastructure resources and workload stages. This segmentation allows the monitoring system to focus exclusively on SLA compliance metrics with high precision, while the flexible software layer can be configured for different SLA requirements without compromising measurement accuracy

Inventive Principle:
Principle #1Segmentation

Data Source

PatentEP4202670B1Infrastructure managed workload distribution
Publication Date: 2026.03.04 INTEL CORP
  • EP4202670B1 patent drawingFigure 1
  • EP4202670B1 patent drawingFigure 2
  • EP4202670B1 patent drawingFigure 3

AI summary

System and techniques for infrastructure managed workload distribution are described herein. An infrastructure processing unit (IPU) receives a workload that includes a workload definition. The workload definition includes stages of the workload and a performance expectation. The IPU provides the workload, for execution, to a processing unit of a compute node to which the IPU belongs. The IPU monitors execution of the workload to determine that a stage of the workload is performing outside of the performance expectation from the workload definition. In response, the IPU modifies the execution of the workload.