1. An article comprising a machine-accessible medium having stored thereon instructions that, when executed by a machine, cause the machine to: obtain from a performance monitor runtime performance data of a thread level utilization of the machine by an application during an execution of the application on the machine, wherein the runtime performance data is indicative of a set of execution characteristics of a thread of the application, including an instructions-per-clock cycle metric and a memory references-per-clock cycle metric, wherein the runtime performance data includes instruction counts, memory references, and cycle counts obtained from a timer interrupt in the performance monitor; and based on the instructions-per-clock cycle metric and the memory references-per-clock cycle metric, reduce power dissipation of the machine by adjusting an operating voltage or an operating frequency of the machine during the execution of the application, wherein the operating voltage and operating frequency are nonzero.