Introduction#

DriveOS supports multiple power modes (for example, SC7 and Surveillance). The power management architecture scales to multi-VM use cases and allows each VM to be managed independently. This section introduces the core concepts.

DriveOS uses the concept of an Operating Point (OP) to describe a specific power and performance configuration for the system or its components.

Hierarchy of Definitions#

  1. IP_OP (IP Operating Point)

    • Each hardware IP (for example, GPU or CPU cluster) supports multiple power and performance points. Select the IP operating point to trade power for performance based on the use case.

    • DriveOS defines IP_OP_0 through IP_OP_63 per hardware IP, where IP_OP_0 is the highest-performance mode and IP_OP_63 is the lowest-power mode (clock or power gated).

    • Example for GPU: IP_OP_0 runs at full performance; IP_OP_2 runs at two TPCs; IP_OP_62 clocks off the GPU; IP_OP_63 power- and rail-gates it.

  2. VM_OP (VM Operating Point)

    • A VM_OP is a collection of IP_OPs plus properties such as CPU allocation for a given virtual machine.

    • A VM_OP is effectively the power state of a VM.

    • DriveOS supports VM_OP_<VM_ID>_0 through VM_OP_<VM_ID>_63.

  3. SOC_OP (System-on-Chip Operating Point)

    • Represents the overall SoC power profile for a specific operational mode.

    • SOC_OP combines VM_OP settings with system-level settings and includes the virtualization servers defined for that SOC_OP.

    • Each SOC_OP is assigned an ID (SOC_OP_n) that corresponds to a use case. DriveOS supports up to 256 SOC_OP values.

  4. Operational Mode/Power Mode/Power State

    • A collection of SOC_OP_n values. A specific operational mode can be reached with one SOC_OP transition or through multiple transitions.

    • Example: For a surveillance operational mode, one SOC_OP may use the DLA engine for inferencing while another uses the PVA.

  5. Functional States of VM

    • VM-specific lifecycle states: for example, init, init done, suspend, operational, deinit prepare, deinit, and reinit.

Note

The power-management framework is configurable, but DriveOS ships with predefined power modes. Contact the customer team for custom mode support.