ITR: System Support for Energy Management in Mobile and Embedded Workloads

Duke University, Durham NC

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of this project is to develop an integrated hardware/software infrastructure to support power management for battery-powered mobile and wireless applications. These future environments will support applications with demanding requirements such as disaster recovery. Energy conservation, especially for mobile and embedded devices, promises to have significant economic, environmental, and societal impacts. The activities focus on three key directions: i) the development of power measurement tools, workloads, and experimental methods to evaluate energy consumption, ii) the energy-aware APIs to allow application-directed power management, and iii) the development of system support for high-level solutions. These research projects all rely on experimental techniques for evaluating ideas. Making empirical measurements and observations on device and workload characteristics pinpoints the problem areas of greatest potential. Initially formulating simulation models narrows the solution space and allows consideration of new architectures. Finally, constructing working prototypes allows observation of all activity associated with real operating environments and offers deeper insights into their behavior. The popularity and accessibility of the palmtop and handheld platforms gives this research significant potential for immediate technology transfer.