INTO THE WILD

Studying Real User Activity Patterns to Guide Power Optimizations for Mobile Architectures
Alex Shye Ben Scholbrock Gokhan Memik
Northwestern University, EECS
Empathic Systems Project

12/14/200 9

International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY.

The rise of mobile architectures

ENIAC

1946

Apple II

Media players, PDAs, smartphones, netbooks

Today

1977
1940 1950 1960 1970 1980 1990 2000 2010

Trends Form factor Total energy store Personal nature

12/14/200 9

Implications Power optimization is important The user drives IBM Thinkpad 700 execution
1992
2

IBM System/360

1964

International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY.

Summary
Observation: For mobile architectures, the user is the workload Claim: Computer architects should study user activity to: (1) Characterize power consumption (2) Guide the development of power optimizations

12/14/200 9

International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY.

Summary
Observation: For mobile architectures, the user is the workload Claim: Computer architects should study user activity to: (1) Characterize power consumption
Log the activity of real users using the Android G1 Develop an accurate power model for the Android G1 Power consumption varies across users The screen and CPU consume the most power

(2) Guide the development of power optimizations

Screen time dominated by long screen intervals Develop optimizations leveraging change blindness Save ~10% total system power with minimal change to user satisfaction
12/14/200 9 International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY. 4

Target Mobile Architecture

We study the HTC Dream mobile platform (Android G1)
First platform based upon Android OS 2 phones, identical hardware:
1. Google Android Developer Phone 1 (ADP1) 2. T-Mobile G1 commercialized version of the G1

[Google ADP1]

How do we proceed with power optimizations? Which components consume the most power?
12/14/200 9 International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY. 5

Logging Real User Activity

NU JamLogger
Runs on any Android G1 Logs system activity
CPU utilization, Wifi traffic, SD card traffic, screen usage, etc.

Periodically sends logs to our server Lightweight

< 5% CPU overhead during active phone use Logs compressed with gzip before upload

Getting Users Released NU JamLogger on Android Market Advertised at Northwestern University, University of Michigan, and online (Slashdot, online Android forums, etc) 20 users, ~250 days of cumulative user activity

12/14/200 9

Each user has over 1 weeks worth of logs

International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY. 6

Power Estimation Model

HW Unit CPU Parameter
hi_cpu_util med_cpu_util screen_on Screen 49446 : CPU_Utilization 23.36 21.50 1.87 screen_brightness 49491 : Load_Avg 4.14 3.49 3.30 1 185 363 call_ringing Call 50343 : Screen_Off call_off_hook 50557 : Wifi_Traffic 10 0 edge_has_traffic

Instrumented Battery via Current Clamp

Jam Logs

EDGE

edge_traffic

Wifi

Power Measurements

Time-based Traces

1 sec. samples w/ parameters

wifi_on wifi_has_traffic wifi_traffic sdcard_traffic music_on system_on idle

SD Card DSP System

Linear Regression
12/14/200 9

Power Model

Idle

International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY.

Accuracy of Power Model

Hardware Specific Runs

Usage Scenarios

Built power model with one ADP1, validated on a separate ADP1 6.6% median error per sample < .1% error summed across all samples (total energy)
12/14/200 9 International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY. 8

Using the Power Model

CPU Wifi DSP

Screen

Estimated power closely tracks real-time measurements Can sum parameters to derive a power breakdown
12/14/200 9 International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY. 9

Power Breakdown (20 Users)

There exists a significant variation in users Idle is very important, consuming 49.3% of total energy
12/14/200 9 International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY. 10

Power Breakdown (20 Users w/o Idle)

Ignoring Idle time, the screen and CPU are most power hungry
Screen: 35.5% (19.2% from brightness) CPU: 12.7%
12/14/200 9 International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY. 11

Studying User Activity for Optimization

Screen activity is a good indicator of usage activity We study screen intervals, periods of time the screen is on Observation: The total screen time is dominated by a small number of long screen intervals
Screen intervals of 100+ seconds account for ~70% of screen time

We develop a power optimization strategy that leverages change blindness to target the screen and CPU

12/14/200 9

International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY.

12

Change Blindness
The inability to distinguish changes in a stimulus

[Simons 99]

12/14/200 9

International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY.

13

Ramp Optimizations
Can change blindness be applied for power optimization? We target the screen and CPU for optimization:
Screen Ramp: slowly dim brightness
Decreases brightness by 7 units (max 255) until 60% of starting brightness

CPU Ramp: slowly decrease effective frequency

Reaches 70% of maximum frequency in 40 seconds Implemented by tuning ondemand DFS governor

We compare to Drop optimizations

Screen Drop: drop to 60% brightness after 40 seconds CPU Drop: drop to 70% frequency after 40 seconds

12/14/200 9

International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY.

14

Power Savings

Simulate optimizations on real user traces CPU Ramp saves 4.9% system power (22.8% of CPU power) Screen Ramp saves 5.7% system power (19.1% of screen power) Ramp optimizations outperform Drop optimizations
12/14/200 9 International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY. 15

Impact on User Experience

User study design
Run four optimizations and a control run (in random order), on:
Web browsing: Browse Wikipedia Game: BreakTheBricks game Video: Watching video with PlayVideo

Ask for verbal satisfaction rating from 1 (low) 5 (high) At end of study, debrief user, and discuss acceptance of optimizations

Results
No significant difference in user satisfaction when compared to control (using paired t-test) except for small changes in:
All optimizations with the Game Screen Drop with Video

Users mostly rated based upon feeling of jumpiness/jitter Works well for screen; most users couldnt tell screen was changing 15 users would use some of optimizations, 4 would not, 1 apathetic
International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY. 16

12/14/200 9

Conclusion
We study real users on real devices in real environments Develop and user power model to characterize power consumption
Show that power consumption does vary across users When active, the screen and CPU consume the most power

Present an example of a user-activity-driven power optimization

Develop ramp optimizations targeting the screen and CPU Save 5.7% and 4.9% of total system power for the screen and CPU, respectively Ramp optimizations well-accepted by users, especially for the screen

Computer architects should study real user activity to:

(1) Characterize power consumption (2) Guide the development of power optimizations
12/14/200 9 International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY. 17

Thank You!
Questions?

Alex Shye http://www.ece.northwestern.edu/~ash451

shye@northwestern.edu

ESP: Empathic Systems Project http://www.empathicsystems.org NU JamLogger: Available on Android Market http://www.ece.northwestern.edu/microarchitecture/jamlogger/
12/14/200 9 International Symposium on Microarchitecture. New York, NY. 18