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.