Intel's LessWatts.org Project Maximizes Power Savings in Linux Systems

(Business News & Technology News, 21 Sep 2007)

Intel Corp. has launched an open source community project designed to meet the growing demands for increased energy efficiency across the computing spectrum spanning servers in data centers to personal mobile devices.

Unveiled at the Intel Developer Forum by Renee James, Corporate Vice President and General Manager of Intel's Software and Solutions Group, the LessWatts.org initiative brings together the community of Linux developers, OSVs and end users to facilitate technology development, deployment and tuning and sharing of information around Linux power management.

For large data centers, server power consumption imposes limits on a center's growth and has significant financial and environmental costs. In addition to the large data center customers, mobile users are also constrained by power consumption limits as battery space is continually squeezed with the overall reduction in size of mobile devices. In both the server and the mobile markets, Linux operating systems continue to grow in relevance and market segment share.

"We created LessWatts.org to accelerate technology development and simplify information sharing for effective power management across a broad spectrum of devices and industry segments that are utilizing Linux," said James. "A focused initiative that aggregates the disparate efforts into a holistic system and builds on our existing efforts with the industry in the Climate Savers Computing Initiative will serve as a strong catalyst to get energy-efficient solutions into the market segment faster, thereby benefiting the customers who purchase Intel-based products."

The LessWatts.org initiative encompasses several key projects including Linux kernel enhancements (such as the "tickless idle" feature that takes better advantage of power saving hardware technologies), the PowerTOP tool that helps tune Linux applications to be power aware and the Linux Battery Life Toolkit to measure and instrument the impact of Linux code changes on power savings. Additionally, LessWatts.org provides Linux support for hardware power saving features being implemented in current and upcoming Intel platforms.

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