A data processing apparatus and method for switching a workload between first and second processing circuits

摘要

A data processing apparatus and method are provided for switching execution of a workload between two processing circuits. The data processing apparatus has a first processing circuit architecturally compatible with a second processing circuit, however, the first processing circuit is microarchitectureally different from the second processing circuit. At any one time, a workload consisting of at least one application and at least one operating system operating the application is executed by either the first processing circuit or the second processing circuit. A switching controller is responsive to a transmission trigger pulse such that a handover operation is performed to transmit execution of the workload from a source processing circuit to a destination processing circuit, wherein the source processing circuitry is one of the first and second processing circuitry and the destination processing circuitry is the other of the first and second processing circuitry. During the handover operation, the circuit controller causes the source processing circuit to make its current architectural state available to the destination processing circuit, wherein the current architectural state is the state that is not available from a shared memory at a time when the handover operation is started, and which is necessary for the target processing circuitry to successfully handle execution of the workload from the source processing circuitry. In addition, the switch controller masks predetermined processor-specific configuration information relative to the at least one operating system so that the transfer of the workload is transparent to that operating system. It has been observed that such an approach brings significant energy consumption benefits while avoiding complexities associated with providing operating systems that have the ability to switch applications between processing circuits.