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Intel's PowerTOP Extends Linux Battery Life
Posted by
kdawson
on Thu May 17, 2007 12:32 PM
from the using-the-hooks dept.
from the using-the-hooks dept.
DuracellFan writes "Intel recently released its PowerTOP utility, which builds on work done by kernel developers to make the Linux kernel power-efficient. PowerTOP gives a snapshot of what apps are consuming the most power. The PowerTOP website also hosts patches for several Linux apps and the kernel. In the Linux.com article, lead PowerTOP developer Arjan van de Ven of Intel says that PowerTOP could soon show which applications keep the disk busy." Linux.com and Slashdot are both part of OSTG.
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Intel Releases Several Projects to Help Save Power 83 comments
GeekyBodhi writes "LessWatts.org is Intel's new website that hosts several power saving tools. As Linux.com reports, it also shares tips and tricks to help optimize power consumption on hardware from portable devices running on batteries to large data centers. 'LessWatts.org is not about marketing, trying to sell you something or comparing one vendor to another. LessWatts.org is about how you can save real watts, however you use Linux on your computer or computers.' As reported on Slashdot earlier, this isn't the first time Intel has tried to help Linux users cut their power bills. In May, the company launched the PowerTOP program that monitors individual processes to keep track of power consumption. The project comes at a time when more vendors are pre-installing Linux on handhelds and laptops." Linux.com and Slashdot are both owned by SourceForge.
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Linux does not consume power! (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
PowerTOP not for casual users (Score:3, Insightful)
For the average user it is a nightmare.
Re: (Score:2)
Projects like "folding@home" for PS3 wh
It's not a bug, it's a feature (tm) ! (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry but you're mistaken.
You actually discovered our latest feature.
You haven't read about it yet, because we were developing and testing it until very recently, and we didn't want to speak to early about it.
We, as developers conscious of their travelling users, that have so much time that they need to work as they are in the train, have though of YOU !
As such we present you our latest feature :
WE GIVE YOU THE POSSIBILITY TO COOK YOUR DINNER ON YOUR LAPTOP (so you can do even more important things during the time you're commuting, which will leave you more free time when you reach your destination !)
Alternatively, you can also use our application on your laptop as AN INCREDIBLE AND COMPACT LAP-WARMER !!! For all those long commute during winter.
(DISCLAIMER : Warning, do not use with Batteries manufactured by Sony).
Thank you, wish you enjoy our brand new features.
- The Dev team.
Second screen shot uses more power (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Laptops??? What about my server farm? (Score:4, Interesting)
My guess is where this kind of thing would make a dollars/cents difference is in the NOC. But this kind of detail isn't very sexy or very high on most NOC operators radar.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
It could mean as much as an hour or two, depending. The less the CPU sleeps, the more power i
How about hours? (Score:5, Informative)
Success Stories [linuxpowertop.org]
Guess you could accuse him of bias...
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you even know what ACPI is? Have you read the link? (clearly not)
No matter how well your "a
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
Our FreeBSD servers auto-throttle their CPU speeds down when idle. The average run
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
The biggest and easiest power savings come from CPU frequency scaling (if your processor suppo
My results (Score:5, Interesting)
But yes, the application is very interesting. Sorry, Intel, my laptop has an AMD processor. The next one will be Intel, with an Intel graphics card and an Intel wireless card. I promise.
arts patch (Score:3, Interesting)
According to this utility ... (Score:4, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Even RHEL and Debian stable, which make up a huge chunk of enterprise server linux in the USA use 2.6 kernels.
Re:Old Kernels (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Old Kernels (Score:5, Funny)
Slackware users don't know people. Stop lying! It's just yourself who runs 2.4, right?
Re: (Score:2, Informative)
Re:How stable is CONFIG_NO_HZ? (Score:5, Informative)
I gave the powertop thing a try the other day. Seems the worst offender on my machine is MPD, even when it's not doing anything.
Re:Useless (Score:5, Insightful)
Can they fix the application? Yes. See the list of numerous patches to various "notorious" offenders.
Before you comment about patches being too difficult to apply - in nearly all cases those patches have been sent upstream and are being integrated into the app by the developers of that app. The end result is that while in the short term, PowerTOP benefits only power users who can patch and compile from source, it has enabled identification of offending sections of application code so that the application authors can fix it. (For example, the next release of Pidgin will come with numerous fixes for behavior found with PowerTOP.)
In short:
PowerTOP has almost no benefit for the "normal" user in the short term
PowerTOP has quite a lot of potential benefit for the "power" user
PowerTOP has the ability to enable application developers to make optimizations that help the "normal" users some time down the line (depending on application/distribution release cycles), thus PowerTOP has great benefit for "normal" users in the long term.
Can they stop the application? Usually not, but there are some notorious offenders that are "on by default" that most users don't benefit too much from, and would rather temporarily or permanently disable to increase battery life. (See Beagle for example).