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