Generally described, embodiments of the present invention are directed at
reducing the power consumed by a CPU. In accordance with one embodiment,
a method is provided that transitions the CPU into a reduced power state
in response to a fetch operation being dispatched to an I/O device. More
specifically, the method includes comparing the latency associated with
recovering from a reduced power state with the time remaining before a
timer expires. Then, a signal is generated that identifies a
timer-specific reduced power state. The method aggregates signals
received from different timers to identify a reduced power that is
appropriate given all of the processing that is scheduled to be
performed.