Power consumption research

Rodney McDonell

2012-03-10 03:21:35 UTC

Ken,

I wrote to this list a few months back about a Modification to my Window
Manager (Blackbox) that Allows the user to select windows that he/she
wants paused whilst those windows are not visible. The Window manager
then sends these applications the STOP signal when they are not visible
(Visibility is detected using XEvent VisibilityNotify).

This works very well when pausing applications like
Eclipse/Firefox/Thunderbird. Whilst all three are open, i can be having
as much as 200 wakes ups per second. When all are paused, i can be
having as little as 60-70. Thats a big saving :).

The patch for Blackbox is available on the Blackbox source forge page:
http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?func=detail&aid=3443852&group_id=40696&atid=428682

I'd be very pleased and to be quite honest, chuffed, if you'd consider
it in your phd or develop the idea further. All i ask is that you do not
forget me in your research and keep me in your thoughts when making
references :)

It works very well.

There are a few issues however:
* whilst one process is paused, copy paste seems to exhibit strange
behavour or does not work
* applications that use the jvm exhibit strange behavour if there are
two java applications that not in the same state: For instance I've
noticed that Eclipse IDE will not do simple things like expand a node in
the navigation tree whilst another application that uses java, such as
Googles chrome browser or Open Office is currently paused. In which case
moving to that workspace or making that application visible fixes the
problem in eclipse.

I'm not sure if these problems can be over come. I think its just
something you have to put up with. Unless i'm using the wrong signal.
Maybe i can pause the application without them blocking other or something?

Would love to hear what you think - even if you don't included it as an
area for your phd.

Post by kernel kernel
Greetings,
I am a graduate student at University College Dublin, Ireland. I am
beginning work on optimizing energy usage in high performance
heterogeneous computing on the Linux platform. My work will focus on
user level scientific/engineering code.
I am willing to contribute to development efforts in this area. Is
there any small project that I could look at to get started?
Also, if any of you are interested in academic collaboration, I'd be
open to that too.
Best Regards,
--
Ken O'Brien - PhD student
Simulation Science and Extreme Events Cluster,
3B1, UCD CASL,
8 Belfield Business Park,
Dublin 4,
Ireland.
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