A method and system for power management including local bounding of
device group power consumption provides the responsiveness of local power
control while meeting global system power consumption and power
dissipation limits. At the system level, a global power bound is
determined and divided among groups of devices in the system so that
local bounds are determined that meet the global system bound. The local
bounds are communicated to device controllers associated with each group
of devices and the device controllers control the power management states
of the associated devices in the group to meet the local bound. Thus, by
action of all of the device controllers, the global bound is met. The
controllers may be memory controllers and the devices memory modules, or
the devices may be other devices within a processing system having
associated local controllers. Alternatively or in concert, the devices
may be entire processing systems and the associated controller a power
management controller for associated processing systems, whereby multiple
processing locales may be power-managed consistent with a global power
consumption budget.
