System Support for Energy Management in Mobile and Embedded Workloads: A White Paper

One of the major challenges of the post-PC environment in which mobile and embedded devices are ubiquitous is the need to reduce the energy consumed in using these devices, thereby extending the lifetime of the batteries that power them as well as reducing the impact of the heat and noise produced by their operation. Energy efficiency of computers is desirable in its own right from both the economic and environmental points of view, especially as computing equipment continues to rapidly proliferate throughout our society. In the near future, there will be broadband wireless coverage in many areas. Sustained exponential growth in processor performance and memory density means that embedded processors and handheld devices will have performance characteristics comparable to today’s workstations. We believe that the availability of a ubiquitous network infrastructure along with powerful processing elements distributed throughout our everyday environment will enable a number of interesting applications. However, the increased dependence on these devices and their increased capabilities comes with a potential cost: increased energy consumption, unless research actively addresses the issue of energy efficiency. To motivate our research, we discuss the vulnerability of one such application to power consumption: