Power Management for Mobile Operating System

Hans Joshep V. OBrien Lanie M. Arco

Introduction
Batteries

Reducing physical dimension

If developers successfully reduce the basic

consumption of mobile computing devices, users may have the bonus of either retaining the charge characteristics of the battery even the battery dimension is reduced and also increase the charge time of the battery.

Introduction
There are components in mobile computing

devices that are responsible for power consumption, these includes the physical components.

Power Consumption of CPU

CPUs clock rate
is related to the power consumed by the CPU, the

supply voltage, and the capacitance of the devices being switched (e.g. the transistors). - when the CPUs clock rate decreases the power consumption also deceases, clock rate decreases because of the switching characteristics of the logic gates (Gregory F. Welch, 1994).

Scheduling for Reduced CPU Energy

CPUs power consumption is significant in mobile

computing device. If the CPU clock frequency and supply voltage can be controlled, linear and quadratic savings in power can be realized. Because lowering the supply voltage results in a quadratic power savings, this is the authors preferred method for power reduction.

Scheduling for Reduced CPU Energy

However, the supply voltage cannot be lowered

(dynamically) without also reducing the clock speed. The authors consider the CPU clock rate to be linearly adjusted with the supply voltage.

Method
Three algorithms for adjusting the CPU clock

speed under the control of the operating system. The evaluation of the algorithms was accomplished through trace-driven simulations.

Results
The three algorithms basic approach is to

balance the usage between the periodic bursts of high CPU utilization and the remaining idle time of the CPU. For instance, lets assume that we have a job that has a CPU burst time of 10 milliseconds usage at the full CPU clock speed and followed by another 10 milliseconds idle time.

Results
If it is possible that that job can be replaced by a

20 milliseconds period of CPU usage at half the normal clock speed, without affecting the user adversely, then such a scheme can be used to conserve power (Welch, G. 1994).

Results
All three algorithms rely on the assumption that

the operating system sleep events that normally result in CPU idle time and can be classified into two categories: - hard and soft sleep events.

Results
Hard sleep events
events result in idle time during which the CPU

speed cannot be reduced. Soft sleep events

- result in idle time during which the CPU

speed can be reduced

Results
The authors classify of CPU idle time because

they want to be fair about assessments, the authors want to know which idle times were subject for use in balancing periods of high and low activity.

Discussions
Three algorithms by Weiser et al. 1994
OPT FUTURE PAST

Discussions
OPT Algorithm
is an impractical and undesirable algorithm. It is

completely optimistic (and impractical) in the sense that it assumes complete knowledge of the future work to be done in an interval (Welch, G. 1994). The said algorithm is undesirable because it rigorously affect the run times of user tasks and disregarding importance of events such as keystroke response or network communications.

Discussions
FUTURE Algorithm
- is similar to OPT because it also assumes future

task to be done but it does so for only short windows of time, and optimizes over only those windows.

Discussions
FUTURE is unrealistic because it peers into the

future. Unlike OPT, it is practical because it only optimizes over short windows, therefore the effect and impact on time-critical work is minimized.

Discussions
PAST
Unlike OPT and FUTURE algorithms PAST

algorithm is a realistic (practical) version of these algorithms. PAST algorithm is realistic because instead of peering into the future, it looks to a short window in the past for information about CPU usage.

Discussions
- It is desirable because like FUTURE it only monitors activity over a short window of the trace. But of the disadvantage of this algorithm is that it assumes the activity in the next (future) window will be like that in the current (past) window.

Discussions
- it is indeed more profitable (in terms of power savings) to spread out work when possible over periods of slower CPU clock rates, rather than contending with bursts of high-speed activity followed by wasted idle time.

Discussions
- The authors also concluded that in their simulations a PAST implementation with a 50 ms window would have saved up to 50% of the power in a 3.3 volt CPU

Conclusion
The development and rise of mobile computing

has introduced new challenges and issues for the designers of computers and computer operating systems. These techniques together focus on what are typically the main causes in terms of power consumption in mobile computing: CPU/memory devices.

Conclusion
While hardware advances have and will likely

continues to reduce the power consumption of these devices, efficient operating system techniques significantly may reduce power consumption without considerably affecting the perceived performance.