Infrastructures for Measuring Power
Report, 2011

Energy-aware resource management requires some means of measuring power consumption. We present three approaches to measuring processor power. The easiest, least intrusive places a power meter between the system and power outlet. Unfortunately, this provides a single system measurement, and acuity is limited by device sampling frequency. Another method samples power at PSU voltage outputs using current transducers. This logs consumption separately per component, but requires custom hardware and an expensive analog acquisition device. A more accurate alternative samples power directly at the processor voltage regulator’s current-sensing pin, but requires motherboard intrusion. We explain implementation of each approach step-by-step.

Author

Bhavishya Goel

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Computer Engineering (Chalmers)

Magnus Själander

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Computer Engineering (Chalmers)

Sally A McKee

Chalmers, Computer Science and Engineering (Chalmers), Computer Engineering (Chalmers)

Vasileios Spiliopoulos

Georgios Keramidas

Stefanos Kaxiras

Konstantinos Efstathiou

Subject Categories

Computer Engineering

Technical report - Department of Computer Science and Engineering, Chalmers University of Technology and Göteborg University

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Created

10/7/2017