TY - GEN
T1 - Power management for mobile games on asymmetric multi-cores
AU - Pathania, Anuj
AU - Pagani, Santiago
AU - Shafique, Muhammad
AU - Henkel, Jörg
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2015 IEEE.
Copyright:
Copyright 2016 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.
PY - 2015/9/21
Y1 - 2015/9/21
N2 - Gaming on mobile platforms is highly power hungry and rapidly drains the limited-capacity battery. In multi-threaded gaming, each thread has different processing requirements and even a single slow thread may lead to Quality of Service (QoS) violations. Further, modern mobile platforms are equipped with asymmetric multi-core processors, so that different cores exhibit diverse power and performance properties. These asymmetric cores along with different Dynamic Power Management (DPM) techniques enable a high degree of power efficiency in mobile gaming. The default Linux power manager (i.e. 'Governor') of asymmetric multi-cores performs power-wise inefficient for mobile games as it over allocates resources for processing threads by being oblivious to the QoS. The state-of-the-art Governor for mobile gaming does not account for multi-threaded gaming workloads, which are mainstream in mobile gaming. In this work, we present a power-performance characterization of multi-threaded mobile games by executing them on a real-world mobile platform with an asymmetric multi-core. This analysis is leveraged to propose a QoS-aware Governor running a lightweight online heuristic that holistically accounts for thread-to-core mapping and DPM. This solution, when integrated into the platform's Operating System (OS), provides 12% improved power efficiency on average.
AB - Gaming on mobile platforms is highly power hungry and rapidly drains the limited-capacity battery. In multi-threaded gaming, each thread has different processing requirements and even a single slow thread may lead to Quality of Service (QoS) violations. Further, modern mobile platforms are equipped with asymmetric multi-core processors, so that different cores exhibit diverse power and performance properties. These asymmetric cores along with different Dynamic Power Management (DPM) techniques enable a high degree of power efficiency in mobile gaming. The default Linux power manager (i.e. 'Governor') of asymmetric multi-cores performs power-wise inefficient for mobile games as it over allocates resources for processing threads by being oblivious to the QoS. The state-of-the-art Governor for mobile gaming does not account for multi-threaded gaming workloads, which are mainstream in mobile gaming. In this work, we present a power-performance characterization of multi-threaded mobile games by executing them on a real-world mobile platform with an asymmetric multi-core. This analysis is leveraged to propose a QoS-aware Governor running a lightweight online heuristic that holistically accounts for thread-to-core mapping and DPM. This solution, when integrated into the platform's Operating System (OS), provides 12% improved power efficiency on average.
KW - Asymmetric or Heterogeneous Multi-Cores
KW - Mobile Games
KW - Power Management
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84958552163&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=84958552163&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1109/ISLPED.2015.7273521
DO - 10.1109/ISLPED.2015.7273521
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:84958552163
T3 - Proceedings of the International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design
SP - 243
EP - 248
BT - Proceedings of the International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design, ISLPED 2015
PB - Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc.
T2 - 20th IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Low Power Electronics and Design, ISLPED 2015
Y2 - 22 July 2015 through 24 July 2015
ER -