An Evaluation Infrastructure for Power and Energy Optimizations

Abstract

The goal of this project is to develop an evaluation infrastructure for power and energy optimizations that consists of a combination of physical measurements and performance modeling. Physical measurements will include current and voltage measurements, as well as temperature measurements. Performance modeling will include models for the CPU, memory subsystems, controllers, communication modules, and I/O devices such as the disk and screen. This technology is crucial to be able to understand and assess the benefits of a proposed optimization for the entire target system, subsets of system components, or single system components. Currently, no such research enabling infrastructure is available. The lack of such an infrastructure has greatly inhibited research into new power and energy management strategies, in particular in the operating systems and compiler research communities where validation experiments typically require physical measurements on existing target systems.

Funded as a pilot project by Rutgers's Information Sciences and Technology Council for one year beginning in May 2003.

Ulrich Kremer and Daniel A. Jiménez