CAREER: Compiler Optimizations for Low Power

目前的低功耗技术主要集中在低功耗硬件设计和操作系统级电源管理上。相比之下，编译器对低功耗的支持仍处于初级阶段，主要是因为大多数经典的速度和空间优化通常也会降低程序的总体功耗，使功耗作为单独的优化目标变得多余。然而，架构和操作系统设计的最新趋势和发展已经使功耗本身成为优化目标。这些最新的发展是(1)更先进的操作系统级电源管理支持，(2)低功耗无线通信的可用性，以及(3)具有动态电压调节能力的可重构架构。本项目研究Java编程语言环境中的低功耗优化。Java已经成为各种不同体系结构中可移植编程的首选语言，包括移动计算机、个人数字助理(PDA)和嵌入式系统。这类设备的大部分正常运行时间(如果不是整个运行时间)都依赖电池供电，这使得节能成为一个关键问题。新的低功耗优化可能会牺牲执行时间以换取节能。它们包括应用程序驱动的电源管理、到远程服务器的位置感知方法/任务映射，以及用于具有动态电压调整的可重新配置架构的指令调度。

Current low power technology focuses on low power hardware designsand OS-level power management. In contrast, compiler support for low-power is still in its infancy, mainly due to the factthat most classical optimizations for speed and space typically reduce a program's overall power consumption as well, making power as a separate optimization objective redundant. However, recent trends and developments in architecture and OS design have made power dissipation an optimization objective in itsown right. These recent developments are (1) more advanced OS-level power management support, (2) availability of low-power wireless communication, and (3) reconfigurable architectures with dynamic voltage scaling capabilities. This project investigates low-power optimizations in the context of the Java programming language. Java has become the language of choice for portable programming across a variety of different architectures, including mobile computers, personal digital assistants (PDA), and embedded systems. Such devices rely on battery power for significant periods of their up-time, if not during the entire time of their operation, making power savings a crucial issue. The new low-power optimizations may trade-off execution time for power savings. They include application-driven power management, location-aware method/task mapping to remote servers, and instruction scheduling for reconfigurable architectures with dynamic voltage scaling.