This work presents I-DVFS: a novel approach to perform instantaneously the frequency switch during dynamic voltage frequency scaling (DVFS). The I-DVFS, unlike legacy DVFS, does not require halting an IPs execution to perform a DVFS transition, and thus, the performance overhead of DVFS is both reduced and more deterministic. Such attributes enable the more frequent use of DVFS and, thus, improve an IPs performance, power, and energy efficiency. Nonetheless, the overlapping of an IPs DVFS transition with the normal IPs execution creates a number of issues that need careful treatment at design time to ensure the reliable operation in the field. This article presents these issues and elucidates on how they are addressed in an implementation of I-DVFS that has been productized and can be found in millions of CPUs.

中文翻译：

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I-DVFS：动态电压和频率调节期间的瞬时频率切换


这项工作提出了 I-DVFS：一种在动态电压频率缩放 (DVFS) 期间瞬时执行频率切换的新颖方法。与传统 DVFS 不同，I-DVFS 不需要停止 IP 执行来执行 DVFS 转换，因此，DVFS 的性能开销既减少又更具确定性。这些属性使 DVFS 的使用更加频繁，从而提高 IP 性能、功率和能源效率。尽管如此，IP DVFS 转换与正常 IP 执行的重叠会产生许多问题，需要在设计时仔细处理，以确保现场可靠运行。本文介绍了这些问题，并阐明了如何在已产品化并在数百万个 CPU 中找到的 I-DVFS 实现中解决这些问题。