does processor power consumption related with the number of running process ?

[mbmessaoud]

Hi

I am working on reducing CPU power consumption of a mips embedded
card

Is there some best practices guides on developping software that does
not need much power

is it related to the number of process running or cpu usage ?

Any comment is welcome

Regards

[Mike Sieweke]

mbmessaoud <mbmes...@gmail.com> wrote:

> I am working on reducing CPU power consumption of a mips embedded
> card
>
> Is there some best practices guides on developping software that does
> not need much power
>
> is it related to the number of process running or cpu usage ?

It depends a great deal on the hardware. Some general rules:

Power down everything you're not using.

Shut off the clock if you can't power it down.

Lower the clock rate if you can't shut it off.

Minimize access to RAM. If your RAM controller supports it,
put RAM in self-refresh mode.

Use interrupts and wait for things to happen (MIPS "wait"
instruction) instead of polling hardware.

The instruction cache is one of the largest power users
inside the MIPS, so anything you can do to minimize the
number of instructions executed will usually save power.

-- Mike Sieweke
-- "Just a bit of harmless brain alteration, that's all..."