Vendors to Squeeze More Juice Out of Linux

Published: October 2, 2007

by Timothy Prickett Morgan

Chip maker Intel wants Linux users to be able to cut back on the electricity they use when they run the operating system on laptops, desktops, servers, and other embedded devices. And to that end, the company has created a new community called LessWatts.org to bring various participants together to help Linux shops tweak the settings in their machinery to run on less electricity.

Three Linux vendors are participating with Intel on the project, including Red Hat, Novell, and Oracle. (Yes, Oracle is a Linux vendor, even if you don't like it.) The community site includes the tickles idle tweaks for the Linux kernel, the PowerTOP tool for allowing Linux applications to be aware of their own power consumption, and the Linux Battery Life Toolkit to show end users what happens to their battery life if they make setting adjustments in Linux.

Right now, the main thing that the LessWatts.org site does is explain the tickles timer, which has been added to the Linux 2.6.21 kernel for 32-bit chips and will likely be added for X64 processors with the Linux 2.6.23 kernel. Basically, Linux has been programmed every 1 millisecond or 4 milliseconds (depending on the settings) to do a bunch of basic housekeeping work, whether or not the machine running Linux is actually doing any productive work. What this means is that Linux-based machines cannot really get down to low-power modes and stay there, and hence, you need to remove the tick and have Linux do its housekeeping while the machine is awakened to do real work. The tick only works when the machine is not in an idle state.

LessWatts.org will be the rallying point where Intel will help the Linux community to adopt new power-saving features in its Core and Nehalem architecture processors, and it will not be surprising if Advanced Micro Devices, Sun Microsystems, and IBM join up to for their respective Opteron, Sparc, and Power processors. And, seeing as though the community is called LessWatts.org and not LessWattsforLinux.org, it seems likely that Intel is encouraging Microsoft to participate in some manner.

One last thing. I am not a grammarian, but in the back of my mind there is a gray-haired old lady with a 3-foot wooden ruler who is pointing it menacingly at me and saying, "It is fewer watts, not less watts; it is less electricity. Learn to speak English." Then again, this hypothetical grammarian from hell probably doesn't know how to turn on a computer, either.