CPA: Cross-Layer Energy Management by Architectures, Operating Systems, and Application Programs

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Energy conservation has become a major challenge in system design. Most existing techniques focus on individual layers: devices, circuits, architecture, or software. The proposed research conserves energy through a collaborative and coherent approach across different layers. In the hardware layer, special registers report cumulative energy consumption of different hardware modules. These registers are called energy counters, similar to performance counters in modern processors. Operating systems use the information from energy counters and follow a set of accounting rules to determine the amount of energy consumed by each process. These processes can adjust their behavior to use energy efficiently. For portable systems powered by batteries, some processes may off-load computation to a remote server that is grid-powered. A programming environment will be developed to assist programmers in improving energy efficiency. This proposal has broader impacts on improving the energy efficiency of electronic systems to provide services for longer periods of time for mobile users.