Abstract: One embodiment of the present invention sets forth a technique for metering a processing workload. A freeze time and run time are used to control whether or not pointers to command buffers are popped from a FIFO and the commands that generate a workload are read for processing. Smaller bursts of commands broken up by periods of idleness are coalesced by the workload metering to create larger bursts of commands during the run time and longer periods of idleness during the freeze time. Power saving features may be enabled during the periods of idleness to reduce the power consumption of the device performing the processing.