Considering power variations of DVS processing elements for energy minimisation in distributed systems

• Published in: International Symposium on System Synthesis (IEEE Cat. No.01EX526) pp. 250 - 255
• Main Authors: Schmitz, Marcus T., Al-Hashimi, Bashir M.
• Format: Conference Proceeding Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York, NY, USA ACM 2001; IEEE
• Series: ACM Conferences
• Subjects: Computer science; Computer systems organization > Embedded and cyber-physical systems; Computer systems organization > Real-time systems; Dynamic voltage scaling; Embedded system; Energy consumption; Frequency; Hardware > Communication hardware, interfaces and storage > Signal processing systems; Permission; Power dissipation; Power system reliability; Software and its engineering > Software organization and properties > Software system structures > Distributed systems organizing principles; Switching circuits; Voltage control
• ISBN: 1581134185; 9781581134186
• ISSN: 1080-1820
• DOI: 10.1145/500001.500060

Dynamic voltage scaling (DVS) is a powerful technique to reduce power dissipation in embedded systems. Some efficient DVS algorithms have been recently proposed for the energy reduction in distributed system. However, they achieve the energy savings solely by scaling the system task with respect to the timing constraints, while neglecting that power varies among, the tasks executed by DVS processing elements (DVS-PEs). In this paper we investigate the problem of considering DVS-PE power variations dependent on the executed tasks, during the synthesis of distributed embedded systems and its impact on the energy savings. Unlike previous approaches, which minimise the energy consumption by exploiting the available slack time without considering the PE power profiles, a new and fast heuristic for the voltage scaling problem is proposed, which improves the voltage selection for each task dependent on the individual power dissipation caused by that task. Experimental results show that energy reductions with up to 80.7% are achieved by integrating the proposed DVS algorithm, which considers the PE power profiles, into the co-synthesis of distributed systems.