CSR---EHS: A Dynamic Compilation Framework for Energy Reduction on Mobile Devices

Southern Illinois University At Carbondale, Carbondale IL

Investigators

Abstract

With the widespread use of the World Wide Web (WWW), programs are increasingly run on virtual machines, which are compiled dynamically to achieve high performance. However, the energy efficiency of the dynamic compilation itself and energy-oriented optimizations that can be efficiently performed by the dynamic compiler at runtime are still largely unexplored. This project studies the dynamic compilation process from the energy consumption perspective and is developing a variety of novel optimization strategies, ranging from pure software-based dynamic transformations to compiler-directed dynamic energy management, runtime adaptation and architectural customization. This effort seeks to systematically and substantially reduce the energy consumption of mobile applications running on virtual machines, without significant impact on performance. The success of this research is expected to accelerate the application of Java programming language to a wider variety of energy-constrained embedded systems, such as mobile phones and PDAs. With improved energy efficiency and prolonged battery lifetime, new applications with rich functionality can be developed for mobile devices. Undergraduate and graduate students are involved in all aspects of this research. New and enhanced courses at the graduate and undergraduate level are being offered as an outcome of this project. The developed software packages and course material are made publicly available through the research website, for use by other researchers or institutions.