Zack's Kernel News
Zack's Kernel News
Chronicler Zack Brown reports on the latest news, views, dilemmas, and developments within the Linux kernel community.
New Power-Saving Techniques
Alejandra Morales announced Cryogenic [1], a kernel module that attempted to reduce a system's energy consumption by scheduling non-urgent input/output operations at times when the input/output devices on the system would already be in use. By scheduling this sort of activity in bursts rather than trickles, Cryogenic created a situation that kept devices in an idle, low-power state for longer periods of time. Alejandra added, "Cryogenic is the result of my Master's thesis, completed at the Technical University of Munich under the supervision of Christian Grothoff."
H. Peter Anvin replied, saying that Cryogenic's programmer interface was too clumsy and that such an ambitious project was likely to receive a lot of technical feedback as part of getting it into the kernel.
But, Peter said, "This is NOT a negative, but rather an indication that the work is valuable enough to work with to integrate it into the kernel. Most likely, in my opinion, making this a standalone driver just isn't going to fly, but rather we will want to integrate it into the core I/O model."
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