US Patent No.  7,210,048 - Prepared by Attorney David Tran for Intel Corporation and filed by Intel Corporation

Brief Description:  For one embodiment, each computer system included in the computer rack 100 is associated with one or more target power consumption levels. The target power consumption level may be referred to as P_TARGET. The P_TARGET may be set to be less than or equal to the P_MAX. For example, referring to FIG. 1B, there may be three different target power consumption levels 110, 115, and 120 (or P_{TARGET A}, P_{TARGET B}, P_{TARGET C}). For one embodiment, the P_TARGET may be used to allocate power to the computer system. Using the P _TARGET 110, 115 or 120 may allow better utilization and improved efficiency of the supporting infrastructure including, for example, available power and cooling capacity. For example, at time t1, the target power consumption level 110 (P_{TARGET A}) may be set for the computer system 105. At time t2, when the power consumption level of the computer system 105 approaches the target power consumption level 110 (P_{TARGET A}), additional power may be allocated to the computer system 105. To do that, the target power consumption level 115 (P_{TARGET B}) may be set for the computer system 105. Similarly, at time t3, when the power consumption level of the computer system 105 approaches the target power consumption level 115 (P_{TARGET B}), additional power may be allocated to the computer system 105 using the target power consumption level 120 (P_{TARGET C}). It may be noted that the amount of power allocated to the computer system 105 is less than the amount of power allocated when the power specification 125 (P_MAX) is used. It may also be noted that additional power may be allocated when there is available power.  The P_TARGET may be set based on several factors. These factors may include, for example, the number of components in the computer system, the workload, available power capacity, available cooling capacity, performance requirement, environmental requirement, administrative requirement, etc. The P_TARGET may be set using a manual approach or an automatic approach. For example, a manual approach may involve using a typical workload to determine a highest power consumption level of the computer system 105. A percentage (e.g., 5%) may then be used as a safe guard to arrive at the P_TARGET. As another example, the P_TARGET may be set by automatically monitoring the power consumption level of the computer system 105 over a period of time during peak usage hours and calculate an average power consumption level. For one embodiment, the P_TARGET may be determined using the techniques described in the application titled “METHOD TO ESTIMATE POWER AND COOLING REQUIREMENTS OF SYSTEMS” filed on Dec. 13, 2001 having Ser. No. 10/022,448. Other techniques may also be used to establish the P_TARGET.

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