Low-Energy Intra-Task Voltage Scheduling Using Static Timing Analysis

We propose an intra-task voltage scheduling algorithm for lowenergy hard real-time applications. Based on a static timing analysis technique, the proposed algorithm controls the supply voltage within an individual task boundary. By fully exploiting all the slack times, a scheduled program by the proposed algorithm always complete its execution near the deadline, thus achieving a high energy reduction ratio. In order to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, we built a software tool that automatically converts a DVS-unaware program into an equivalent low-energy program. Experimental results show that the low-energy version of an MPEG-4 encoder/decoder (converted by the software tool) consumes less than 7#25% of the original program running on a fixed-voltage system with a power-down mode. 1

Adaptive runtime techniques for power and resource management on multi-core systems

Energy-related costs are among the major contributors to the total cost of ownership of data centers and high-performance computing (HPC) clusters. As a result, future data centers must be energy-efficient to meet the continuously increasing computational demand. Constraining the power consumption of the servers is a widely used approach for managing energy costs and complying with power delivery limitations. In tandem, virtualization has become a common practice, as virtualization reduces hardware and power requirements by enabling consolidation of multiple applications on to a smaller set of physical resources. However, administration and management of data center resources have become more complex due to the growing number of virtualized servers installed in data centers. Therefore, designing autonomous and adaptive energy efficiency approaches is crucial to achieve sustainable and cost-efficient operation in data centers. Many modern data centers running enterprise workloads successfully implement energy efficiency approaches today. However, the nature of multi-threaded applications, which are becoming more common in all computing domains, brings additional design and management challenges. Tackling these challenges requires a deeper understanding of the interactions between the applications and the underlying hardware nodes. Although cluster-level management techniques bring significant benefits, node-level techniques provide more visibility into application characteristics, which can then be used to further improve the overall energy efficiency of the data centers. This thesis proposes adaptive runtime power and resource management techniques on multi-core systems. It demonstrates that taking the multi-threaded workload characteristics into account during management significantly improves the energy efficiency of the server nodes, which are the basic building blocks of data centers. The key distinguishing features of this work are as follows: We implement the proposed runtime techniques on state-of-the-art commodity multi-core servers and show that their energy efficiency can be significantly improved by (1) taking multi-threaded application specific characteristics into account while making resource allocation decisions, (2) accurately tracking dynamically changing power constraints by using low-overhead application-aware runtime techniques, and (3) coordinating dynamic adaptive decisions at various layers of the computing stack, specifically at system and application levels. Our results show that efficient resource distribution under power constraints yields energy savings of up to 24% compared to existing approaches, along with the ability to meet power constraints 98% of the time for a diverse set of multi-threaded applications

Low-energy intra-task voltage scheduling using static timing analysis

We propose an intra-task voltage scheduling algorithm for lowenergy hard real-time applications. Based on a static timing analysis technique, the proposed algorithm controls the supply voltage within an individual task boundary. By fully exploiting all the slack times, a scheduled program by the proposed algorithm always complete its execution near the deadline, thus achieving a high energy reduction ratio. In order to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, we built a software tool that automatically converts a DVS-unaware program into an equivalent low-energy program. Experimental results show that the low-energy version of an MPEG-4 encoder/decoder (converted by the software tool) consumes less than 7�25 % of the original program running on a fixed-voltage system with a power-down mode. 1

A low power design for arithmetic and logic unit

Master'sMASTER OF ENGINEERIN

Gerência do consumo de energia dirigida pela aplicação em sistemas embarcados

Dissertação (mestrado) - Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Centro Tecnológico. Programa de Pós-Graduação em Ciência da Computação.Baixo consumo de energia é um dos principais requisitos no projeto de sistemas embarcados, principalmente quando estes são alimentados por baterias. Técnicas que têm sido aplicadas com eficácia em sistemas de computação genérica não têm atingido o mesmo êxito em sistemas embarcados, ou devido à falta de flexibilidade, ou devido aos requisitos para sua implantação (volumes de memória e processamento), que podem tornar proibitiva sua aplicação nestes dispositivos. Este trabalho define uma interface simples e uniforme para gerência de energia dirigida pela aplicação em sistemas embarcados. Esta interface disponibiliza ao programador da aplicação a flexibilidade de configurar os modos de operação de baixo consumo dos componentes em uso, conforme sua necessidade. A implementação buscou garantir a portabilidade desta aplicação a um baixo custo em termos de uso de memória e processamento. Este trabalho utiliza Redes de Petri Hierárquicas para especificar os procedimentos de troca de modos de operação dos componentes, utilizando os pontos de refinamento destas redes para representar as relações entre os diversos componentes do sistema. O uso das Redes de Petri permitiu analisar o mecanismo de gerência de energia para verificar seu funcionamento e a inexistência de impasses. A extensão da interface dos componentes e a inclusão dos procedimentos de troca de modo de operação foram implementadas como um aspecto. Um protótipo foi desenvolvido utilizando o sistema operacional Embedded Parallel Operating System (EPOS) e estudos de caso foram realizados para demonstrar a usabilidade desta interface