Energy-savings algorithms reviewed

The May edition of Communications of the ACM has a review article on algorithms for estimating the value of various energy-saving techniques in microprocessor-based systems.

Written by Professor Susanne Albers of Humboldt University, Berlin, the piece looks at the problems of putting systems into power-down modes when the system has a shaky picture of what’s about to happen: how much overhead can you tolerate when you aren’t sure an interrupt isn’t going to arrive within the next microsecond, demanding a return to full wakefulness?

The review looks at the problems of scheduling in systems that may run at different speeds to reduce overall power consumption and the modelling techniques that researchers have devised to tackle these issues.

As well as single systems, Albers looks at power consumption in networks and multiprocessor systems, although this is an area that has only just begun to be analysed in any depth.

For an understanding of the research that has been pursued into power-saving analysis and estimation, this article is a good place to start.

Posted by Chris Edwards

The Low-Power Design Blog is sponsored by Mentor Graphics. The company has focused years of R&D on low-power design techniques and is glad to support a resource that highlights creative methods for reducing the power consumption of electronic systems.