Measuring the User For CPU Frequency Scaling 190
An anonymous reader writes "The Empathic Systems Project a Northwestern University demonstrate up to 50% power savings by controlling CPU frequency scaling based upon the end user. They measure the user with eye trackers, galvanic skin response, and force sensors to find a CPU frequency that the user is satisfied with.
They are currently studying user activity and system performance on mobile architectures, specifically the Android G1 phone."
Re:so what this means is? (Score:5, Informative)
Most of the drain users see today is OS bloat and Virus scan software bloat. Face it, A "fully updated" WinXP SP3 with a fully updated, modern antivirus package needs ~4 times the hardware a base WinXP (or even Win2K SP4) system would want.
Re:That's actually just the start (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Way I read it (Score:5, Informative)
How much self-hate does someone need to actually want to punish themselves to save the planet? I guess we'll soon know.
I don't think it's self-hate that drives this thinking. Rather it's a desire to be aware of how one's day to day decisions have a broader impact on the planet as a whole - and choosing to limit that impact where possible.
The 19th and 20th centuries and the growth of industrialism and consumerism was based on the idea that resources are infinite and pollution negligible. Under those "constraints", there is no reason to constrain yourself - do what you want because there are not consequences. Sadly for us, those assumptions are not accurate. The resources are indeed finite, and the cumulative effect of the pollutants we produce are now measurable.
It IS indeed painful to shift from a "I can have and do whatever I want" mindset to one where you think about the impact of everything you do. The real problem is that it's impossible to track the impact of the behaviors of one person on the global system. _I_ can pee in the well and we all still have pretty safe drinking water. But if we all individually make that same choice, we all pretty soon have bad water.
As for this system, it sounds horrible and would most likely be abused in the worst way. The idea in one perspective sounds good... identify where resources are needed and increase them. But what you describe is more likely, particularly from a capitalist mindset - continue degrading the experience until it is just barely acceptable.
What makes much more sense is to make a little widget that can show how much energy is being used in a given state and let the user decide how much they might want to slow down the processor. If they care about saving energy, they can dial it down themselves to the level they can tolerate. If they want a faster experience (vital in number crunching and gaming), let them do that - and the widget can show the incremental cost.
In a similar way of thinking, they just installed a new "smart" electric meter on my house. I really hope I'm able to access the data from it. If I can get variable pricing based on peak load in the system, then I have a lot of incentive to time my dish washer, clothes washer, etc to do their work in the non-peak times. It saves me money and makes a more efficient load on the system. Everyone wins. Hopefully they don't screw it up.