{"id":1875,"date":"2011-06-06T15:39:08","date_gmt":"2011-06-06T14:39:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.mentor.com\/colinwalls\/?p=1875"},"modified":"2026-03-26T16:34:59","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T20:34:59","slug":"system-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/2011\/06\/06\/system-power\/","title":{"rendered":"System power"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I have raised the subject of embedded device power consumption before and I will again, as this is becoming more and more of a hot topic [no pun intended]. As I have touched upon on a previous occasion, power consumption is no longer purely a hardware &#8211; the software can have a significant effect. There are obvious ways that software has an influence: code efficiency, control of system voltage and clock frequency, de-activation of currently unused sub-systems [like displays, wireless etc.], good use of sleep modes &#8230; The list goes on.<\/p>\n<p>Designing code for power efficiency is a big challenge, even with an OS that has facilities to assist. Verifying the implementation is another matter &#8230;<!--more--><\/p>\n<p>There are numerous challenges with verifying the control of device power, but it is possible to visualize a tool that would get the job done. Here are a few things that it would need to do:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Monitor power consumption and track to current code execution.<\/li>\n<li>Perform such tracing on complex, multicore systems, which may use multiple operating systems.<\/li>\n<li>Be able to work with multiple hardware representations from simulation through to final hardware [as the software optimization for power must start long before final hardware is available].<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Does such a tool exist? Or is it really an integrated set of tools? Watch this space.<\/p>\n<p>Just bear in mind that there is only one embedded software company that has strong roots in the hardware design world, but is not owned by a chip vendor. And there is only one EDA company who have made a really significant investment in embedded software &#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I have raised the subject of embedded device power consumption before and I will again, as this is becoming more&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":71677,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"spanish_translation":"","french_translation":"","german_translation":"","italian_translation":"","polish_translation":"","japanese_translation":"","chinese_translation":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[300,308,328,329],"industry":[],"product":[],"coauthors":[],"class_list":["post-1875","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-embedded-software","tag-low-power","tag-multi-core","tag-multi-os"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/71677"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1875"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9968,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1875\/revisions\/9968"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1875"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1875"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1875"},{"taxonomy":"industry","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/industry?post=1875"},{"taxonomy":"product","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/product?post=1875"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.sw.siemens.com\/embedded-software\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=1875"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}