Factory Bios Default Settings; Power Management Modes; Os Control; Active Power Controller - Dell PowerEdge R715 Technical Manual

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8.3 Factory BIOS Default Settings

See the System Setup Options section in the Using the System Setup Program and UEFI Boot Manager
chapter in the PowerEdge R715 Hardware Owner's Manual on Support.Dell.com.

8.4 Power Management Modes

8.4.1

OS Control

AMD processors support Enhanced AMD PowerNow!™ which enables the processor to dynamically
change its operating frequency in response to workload changes. The industry standard
implementation of this power management feature is in the Operating System (OS). The OS monitors
process/thread level utilization of the processor and uses processor controls to change the
processor's operating frequency. For heavy workloads, the OS will run the processor at higher
frequencies for additional performance. Lighter workloads do not need high performance, thus the
OS will run the processor at lower frequencies.
8.4.2

Active Power Controller

The Dell Active Power Controller (DAPC) is a Dell proprietary implementation that provides improved
performance/watt over the OS implementation of AMD PowerNow!. DAPC was first released with the
11G server platforms. DAPC is implemented in system BIOS and uses hardware level counters, etc. to
determine hardware utilization. BIOS uses this information to determine when to change the
processor's operating frequency.
DAPC is OS independent. The OS no longer has control. This provides a consistent power management
solution regardless of the installed OS. Some OS(s), particularly hypervisors, do not support power
management, thus DAPC provides a solution when there otherwise would not be one.
8.4.3

Maximum Performance

The Maximum Performance Mode disables power management. In this mode, the processor frequency
is statically set to the highest supported frequency.
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