Getting Debian to use less power?
Today Intel announced the powertop tool to report which process in a
Linux system is consuming most power. Check out
<URL:http://www.linuxpowertop.org/> for the tool, and my RFP in
#423504.
Running this tool on my IBM Thinkpad X41 with Debian/Etch, the tool
report my power consumption to be 23.1 W and 99% of the time is spent
in CPU state C0. I also tested the same program on a Fujitsu Siemens
Amilo M1450 laptop running Ubuntu Edgy, and on this laptop 99% of the
time there is spent in CPU state C2. I do not get any information on
power consumption, so I can't compare that.
The tool is said to work better if the kernel is compiled with
CONFIG_TIMER_STATS, and if the kernel is using the NO_HZ option
available in linux 2.6.21.
The web page for the tool includes patches for among other things the
kernel, gaim, firefox to get them to waste less CPU and thus reduce
power consumption. Keith Packard is sited as having been able to
increase his laptops battery lifetime from 4 to 7 hours by using
powertop to guide the improvements.
Have a look. I would be trilled if Debian could implement all the
tricks to increase battery lifetime, and make sure our users save both
the environment and their power bill.
Friendly,
--
Petter Reinholdtsen
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