User- and process-driven dynamic voltage and frequency scaling

Abstract

We describe and evaluate two new, independently-applicable power reduction techniques for power management on processors that support dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS): user-driven frequency scaling (UDFS) and process-driven voltage scaling (PDVS). In PDVS, a CPU-customized profile is derived offline that encodes the minimum voltage needed to achieve stability at each combination of CPU frequency and temperature. On a typical processor, PDVS reduces the voltage below the worst-case minimum operating voltages given in datasheets. UDFS, on the other hand, dynamically adapts CPU frequency to the individual user and the workload through direct user feedback. Our UDFS algorithms dramatically reduce typical operating frequencies and voltages while maintaining performance at a satisfactory level for each user. We evaluate our techniques independently and together through user studies conducted on a Pentium M laptop running Windows applications. We measure the overall system power and temperature reduction achieved by our methods. Combining PDVS and the best UDFS scheme reduces measured system power by 49.9% (27.8% PDVS, 22.1% UDFS), averaged across all our users and applications, compared to Windows XP DVFS. The average temperature of the CPU is decreased by 13.2°C. User trace-driven simulation to evaluate the CPU only indicates average CPU dynamic power savings of 57.3% (32.4% PDVS, 24.9% UDFS), with a maximum reduction of 83.4%. In a multitasking environment, the same UDFS+PDVS technique reduces the CPU dynamic power by 75.7% on average. © 2009 IEEE.