Gentoo Archives: gentoo-user

From: R0b0t1 <r030t1@×××××.com>
To: gentoo-user@l.g.o
Subject: [gentoo-user] [OT] Calculating power consumption of a running program?
Date: Wed, 23 Aug 2017 22:29:21
Message-Id: CAAD4mYg33oMVUyGoYH4N+COFHEMLuQYzQvW6iCLkU0iQKGv8dA@mail.gmail.com
1 As an example, I am interested in characterizing the power consumption
2 of rendering a PDF document. I would hopefully only need to run the
3 renderer once.
4
5 I can use PowerTOP, but it seems to be limited to rough measurements
6 on the order of tenths of a watt. This measurement can be divided
7 among the wakeup events in an attempt to calculate software power
8 consumption but it seems imperfect if I want to monitor a single
9 process that may be competing relatively equally for resources with
10 the kernel and other user processes.
11
12 PMBus is a spinoff of SMBus which is a spinoff of I2C which is found
13 on many motherboards. PMBus is supposed to be the interface which
14 controls and reports power supply activity. Besides the main kW power
15 supply, there is usually a power supply near your processor that steps
16 down 3.3V or 5V to 2.8V, 1.8V, or lower (I've seen as low as 0.8V, but
17 not on a desktop). I was not aware these had a visible interface.
18
19 Apparently you can talk to these, but my searches can only find code
20 which seems highly experimental. The other replies seem to be for
21 embedded Linux systems running on FPGAs and perhaps Cortex-A parts.
22
23 If I were using a microcontroller I could get uA or nA draw per MHz
24 and I know my operating voltage and operating time. However, desktop
25 processors are much more complex, and I am not sure if they have been
26 entirely characterized. The most advanced tool I can find is PowerTOP
27 and it does not seem very accurate.
28
29 Does anyone have any suggestions? Should I start reading source code
30 or post on the forums? Or perhaps someone has used PowerTOP and found
31 it to be reasonably accurate?
32
33 R0b0t1.

Replies

Subject Author
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Calculating power consumption of a running program? Alan McKinnon <alan.mckinnon@×××××.com>
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Calculating power consumption of a running program? "Poison BL." <poisonbl@×××××.com>
Re: [gentoo-user] [OT] Calculating power consumption of a running program? Alec Ten Harmsel <alec@××××××××××××××.com>