1*9c5db199SXin LiWhat's eating the battery life of my laptop? Why isn't it many more 2*9c5db199SXin Lihours? Which software component causes the most power to be burned? 3*9c5db199SXin LiThese are important questions without a good answer... until now. 4*9c5db199SXin Li 5*9c5db199SXin LiThe Linux 2.6.21 kernel introduces the so called tickless-idle 6*9c5db199SXin Lifeature. This feature allows the processor to be really idle for long 7*9c5db199SXin Liperiods of time, rather than having to wake up every millisecond for 8*9c5db199SXin Lithe timer tick. Current processors save a lot of power if they are 9*9c5db199SXin Liidle for long periods, which translates into a longer battery life for 10*9c5db199SXin Liyour laptop, or a lower energy bill for your datacenter. However, a 11*9c5db199SXin LiLinux system consists of more software than just the kernel, and there 12*9c5db199SXin Liare many tunables involved. It's not easy to see what is going on, and 13*9c5db199SXin Lias a result the behavior is sometimes far from optimal, and a lot of 14*9c5db199SXin Lipower is wasted. 15*9c5db199SXin Li 16*9c5db199SXin LiIntel is proud to announce the PowerTOP tool 17*9c5db199SXin Li(http://www.linuxpowertop.org), a program that collects the various 18*9c5db199SXin Lipieces of information from your system and presents an overview of how 19*9c5db199SXin Liwell your laptop is doing in terms of power savings. In addition, 20*9c5db199SXin LiPowerTOP will provide an indication of which tunables and software 21*9c5db199SXin Licomponents are the biggest offenders in slurping up your battery time. 22*9c5db199SXin LiPowerTOP will update it's display frequently so that you can directly 23*9c5db199SXin Lisee the impact of any changes you are making. 24*9c5db199SXin Li 25*9c5db199SXin LiA typical Linux distribution has many components that wake the 26*9c5db199SXin Liprocessor up frequently for no good reason. In our testing with 27*9c5db199SXin LiPowerTOP, we have seen many cases where with some simple fixes, the 28*9c5db199SXin Libattery life of typical laptops was increased by one hour or more! 29*9c5db199SXin Li 30*9c5db199SXin LiWe are providing fixes for several of the issues we identified, and we 31*9c5db199SXin Liencourage the Linux community to help us in this quest to get the 32*9c5db199SXin Limaximum battery life out of your (hopefully Intel based) laptops. Try 33*9c5db199SXin Lithe PowerTOP tool, join the mailing list or the IRC channel and 34*9c5db199SXin Liprovide feedback, problem reports or fixes! 35*9c5db199SXin Li 36*9c5db199SXin LiWebsite: http://www.linuxpowertop.org 37*9c5db199SXin LiIRC: irc.oftc.net #powertop channel 38*9c5db199SXin LiMailing list: http://www.bughost.org/mailman/listinfo/power 39*9c5db199SXin LiTags: intel, linux 40*9c5db199SXin Li 41*9c5db199SXin Li 42*9c5db199SXin Li 43*9c5db199SXin LiIf you have bugreports or patches, I prefer that you use the mailing list 44*9c5db199SXin Libut you can email me directly at [email protected]. 45