Open IoT & ELC 2017

A major issue the Community faces regarding power management is the lack of power data and instrumentation: dev boards miss probe points, SW PM code poorly instrumented, SoC vendors not sharing much power data. Therefore, when comes the power optimization stage, ad hoc/custom techniques are used over and over again. In addition to the lack of HW and SW instrumentation, power measurement equipment is usually expensive and not affordable for many developers. Not much can be done about HW instrumentation, but power instrumenting the Linux Kernel could definitively help. For instance, we could finally dynamically get the real platform power consumption, therefore enabling closed-loop power policies, power visualization apps, improved power models for nextgen SoC, etc. Motivations, challenges, and benefits will be discussed during this presentation, closing with a proof of concept.