Abstract: Process and apparatus for communication between an Information Handling System (HIS) and a display having On “Screen Display” (OSD) capability. The HIS system includes a processor under control of an operating system, a graphics system and an electronic circuit which operates independently on the processor and the graphics system. The display receives a graphics channel with the graphics signals. An additional service channel is used for the interaction between the host and the display, and also for allowing the independent electronic circuit to have a direct access to the On Screen Display capability of the display. The service channel may be advantageously a DDC/CI communication link, and the electronic circuit may be a hardware monitoring circuit which is operational even before the booting process of the processor. No additional Liquid Crystal Display is thus required.

Abstract: The present invention relates to a data processing system and method having a reduced power consumption. A power context is established for each application task, process or thread running within a computer system. The power context controls the operating conditions of the processor by, for example, reducing the frequency of the processor clock or the operating voltage of the processor. A scheduler is used to switch between threads a, in horn, between power contexts associated with the threads. The switching is performed according to the conventional priority switching of threads by an operating system. However, since each tread has an associated power context, the performance of the processor, and hence the power consumption is varied on a time slot-by-time slot basis.