Stephen Dawson-Haggerty and Andrew Krioukov and David E. Culler

EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley

Technical Report No. UCB/EECS-2009-140

October 19, 2009

http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-140.pdf

A flurry of recent work has examined the interaction between system design and power optimization, with the promise of energy savings. We find that the power consumed by current commodity hardware can be well-approximated by a model with two components: a large always-present constant power and a linear power-performance tradeoff. As a result, many proposed optimizations currently have limited value and the best possible approach is the so-called "race to sleep" model of computation. We survey several recently-released computer systems in support of this conclusion and briefly examine the most important targets for future work.

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BibTeX citation:

@techreport{Dawson-Haggerty:EECS-2009-140,
    Author= {Dawson-Haggerty, Stephen and Krioukov, Andrew and Culler, David E.},
    Title= {Power Optimization – a Reality Check},
    Year= {2009},
    Month= {Oct},
    Url= {http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-140.html},
    Number= {UCB/EECS-2009-140},
    Abstract= {A flurry of recent work has examined the interaction between system design and power optimization, with the promise of energy savings.  We find that the power consumed by current commodity hardware can be well-approximated by a model with two components: a large always-present constant power and a linear power-performance tradeoff.  As a result, many proposed optimizations currently have limited value and the best possible approach is the so-called "race to
sleep" model of computation.  We survey several recently-released computer systems in support of this conclusion and briefly examine the most important targets for future work.},
}

EndNote citation:

%0 Report
%A Dawson-Haggerty, Stephen 
%A Krioukov, Andrew 
%A Culler, David E. 
%T Power Optimization – a Reality Check
%I EECS Department, University of California, Berkeley
%D 2009
%8 October 19
%@ UCB/EECS-2009-140
%U http://www2.eecs.berkeley.edu/Pubs/TechRpts/2009/EECS-2009-140.html
%F Dawson-Haggerty:EECS-2009-140