A variety of different techniques have been developed to increase the amount of processing resources that are available to a computing device. One such technique involves the use of multiple processors. For example, a single integrated circuit may be configured to include multiple processors (e.g., processor cores), thereby providing increased processing resources for a computing device that employs the integrated circuit. However, the use of multiple processors traditionally resulted in increased power consumption, which may make use of multiple processors less suitable in certain configurations.
For instance, a computing device may be configured for an office environment and therefore have access to an external power source. In another example, however, the computing device may be configured for mobile applications and therefore may not have ready access to an external power source. Consequently, a computing device configured for use in mobile applications may also incorporate a power source (e.g., a battery) that may be considered limited when compared to the external power source. For example, the amount of power that may be obtained from the battery by the processor and other resources of the computing device may be limited. Therefore, this limited power may make traditional multiprocessor techniques unsuitable for mobile applications.