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14-2   Vol. 3
POWER AND THERMAL MANAGEMENT
tools can access model-specific events and report the occurrences of state 
transitions.
14.2 
P-STATE HARDWARE COORDINATION
The Advanced Configuration and Power Interface (ACPI) defines performance states 
(P-state) that are used facilitate system software’s ability to manage processor 
power consumption. Different P-state correspond to different performance levels 
that are applied while the processor is actively executing instructions. Enhanced Intel 
SpeedStep Technology supports P-state by providing software interfaces that control 
the operating frequency and voltage of a processor. 
With multiple processor cores residing in the same physical package, hardware 
dependencies may exist for a subset of logical processors on a platform. These 
dependencies may impose requirements that impact coordination of P-state transi-
tions. As a result, multi-core processors may require an OS to provide additional soft-
ware support for coordinating P-state transitions for those subsets of logical 
processors.
A BIOS (following ACPI 3.0 specification) can choose to expose P-state as dependent 
and hardware-coordinated to OS power management (OSPM) policy. To support 
OSPMs, multi-core processors must have additional built-in support for P-state hard-
ware coordination and feedback.
Intel 64 and IA-32 processors with dependent P-state amongst a subset of logical 
processors permit hardware coordination of P-state and provide a hardware-coordi-
nation feedback mechanism using IA32_MPERF MSR and IA32_APERF MSR. See 
Figure 14-1 for an overview of the two 64-bit MSRs and the bullets below for a 
detailed description:
Use CPUID to check the P-State hardware coordination feedback capability bit. 
CPUID.06H.ECX[Bit 0] = 1 indicates IA32_MPERF MSR and IA32_APERF MSR are 
present.
IA32_MPERF MSR (0xE7) increments in proportion to a fixed frequency, which is 
configured when the processor is booted.
Figure 14-1.  IA32_MPERF MSR and IA32_APERF MSR for P-state Coordination
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0
IA32_MPERF (Addr: E7H)
63
0
IA32_APERF (Addr: E8H)