Abstract: A power management unit and a corresponding method for controlling performance and power consumption of a complex low-power integrated system's processing core by automatically reducing them to a level where outstanding computational operations and software tasks can be performed just in time for further processing. A linear non-recursive adaptive filter performs a processor load prediction of the system's processing core is applied, whose filter coefficients may e.g., be calculated based on the least mean square (LMS) optimization criterion or based on any other similarity measure. In this connection, the adaptive filter may e.g., be used to predict the regularity of the clock frequency in the processing core. By using this information, the linear non-recursive adaptive filter predicts the duration of how long the processing core may lower its operating voltage to still be able to complete all its tasks in time.