Application Energy Toolkit

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Last Modified On :   October 2, 2008 10:39 AM PDT
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The Application Energy Toolkit is a set of tools designed to help software developers and quality assurance teams to create and evaluate software applications for power awareness. The primary objectives of these tools are to increase the developer's understanding of the application's impact on battery power and to help them create energy-efficient software.

The tools within the Application Energy Toolkit originated in the former Mobile Computing Technology Kit (MCTK) and have been modified to support Microsoft Windows, Linux and Mac OS X. The mobility enabling tools provided in the toolkit are intended to support experimentation, testing, and diagnostic evaluation of applications during the software development process.

Key Components

There are three components in the Application Energy Toolkit:

1) Power Status Simulator (Windows & Linux Only)

The Power Status Simulator simulates a battery-operated environment for an application running on a system that is AC powered.

Development platforms are typically AC powered and don't provide an option to operate on batteries. Power Status Simulator provides a user-controllable power environment for software developers and testers to help them develop power-aware applications for battery powered mobile computers on an AC-powered development platform.

2) Application Energy Graphing Tool

The Application Energy Graphing Tool is an interactive tool that can measure the battery power consumption of an application over time, and log and graph the resulting data.

Application developers can use the Application Energy Graphing Tool to help them design applications that conserve battery power on mobile computer systems.

3) Application Energy Command Line Tool

The Application Energy Command Line Tool automates the process of determining the total power consumption and net power consumption of an application running on a battery-operated system. It provides some of the same functionality as the Application Energy Graphing tool, but enables automated testing from a command line interface or batch processing.

System Requirements
CPU:Intel microprocessor preferred Pentium4 and above models.
OS:Microsoft Windows XP SP2 or Microsoft Windows Vista.
Linux 2.6 kernel (Dependencies QT >= 4.3, HAL, D-BUS, ncurses)
Mac OS X Leopard
HDD:10 MB or above.
RAM:512MB and above.
Batteries:ACPI-Compliant Battery.

Technical Documents

Download and Discussion

If you have any questions and/or input on this evaluator tool, please go to the mobile developer community forum to chat with developers and Intel engineers.

About Authors

Judy Hartley is a Software Applications Engineer working for Intel Corporation’s Software and Solutions Group in Hillsboro, OR.  She worked for 5 years in Chandler, Arizona as a Product Development Engineer before transitioning to SSG in November of 2005.

Tareq Darwish is a software engineer working on Platform Power Enabling as part of client enabling in the Software Solutions Group. His current focus is on defining tools and technologies to support the development of energy-efficient software for Intel-based mobile platforms. Prior to working at Intel, He worked for 9 years with Lexmark Int. in Lexington Kentucky as a Software Development Engineer. He earned his MS degree in Applied Computing and Software Engineering at Eastern Kentucky University. His email is tareq.h.darwish@intel.com

Joe Olivas is a software engineer working on Platform Power Enabling as part of client enabling in the Software Solutions Group. His current focus on defining tools and technologies to support the development of energy-efficient software for Intel-based mobile platforms. He obtained his Masters degree in Computer Science from California State University, Sacramento. His email is joseph.k.olivas@intel.com