Communications of the ACM
Research Project Limits Computer Power Consumption
A new scheduling algorithm developed by researchers at the University of Sydney promises to cut the energy consumption of processors in data centers by more than half without disrupting operations. Young Choon Lee and Albert Zomaya at the university's Center for Distributed and High Performance Computing hope to have a prototype of the Energy Conscious Scheduling (ECS) algorithm by early 2010 and a commercial product by the end of next year.
The ECS software would be a suite of algorithms acting as middleware that can see the operating system and hardware and make decisions on what to do with different tasks. "In doing so, it makes sure whatever decisions are made are energy-conscious," Zomaya says. "We want it to be as seamless as possible and it could eventually be integrated with the operating system."
Using a processor's dynamic voltage scaling capability, ECS maps computational tasks to minimize completion time and energy use. In tests, Lee and Zomaya have used ECS for solving equations and other computing-intensive applications.
From Computerworld Australia
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