Download Intel® Power Gadget 2.0 now!
32-bit Intel® Power Gadget 2.0 (Windows)
64-bit Intel® Power Gadget 2.0 (Windows)

Intel® Power Gadget 2.0 for Mac

Introduction

Intel® Power Gadget 2.0 is a software-based power estimation tool enabled for 2nd Generation Intel® Core™ processors. It includes a Microsoft Windows* sidebar gadget, driver, and libraries to monitor and estimate real-time processor package power information in watts using the energy counters in the processor. With this release, we are providing functionality to evaluate power information on various platforms including desktops/notebooks and servers.

Background

Traditional methods to estimate power/energy usage of the processor has always been a cumbersome task that included special purpose tools or instrumentation on the motherboard along with third party equipment. Intel had earlier released Intel® Power Gadget 1.0 that included estimation of processor power via energy counters available in 2nd Generation Intel® Core^TM processor family. The motivation for the gadget was to assist end-users, ISV's, OEM's, developers, etc in more precise estimation of power from a software level without any H/W instrumentation.

New Features

With the current release, we are providing additional functionalities that include estimation of power on multi-socket systems as well as externally callable APIs to extract power information within sections of code. The multi-socket support essentially evaluates the Energy MSR on a per-socket basis and provides an estimate of power draw per socket. The API layer is a set of libraries and dlls that can be called via C/C#/C++ or via JavaScript and offers the flexibility to build the tool within code sections of an application. A blog on accessing Intel® Power Gadget 2.0 libary in C++ provides more details. Latest release also include a signed driver that eliminates the need to disable driver signing on 64-bit OS (previous version needed driver signing disablement during boot).

Brief Description

Intel® Power Gadget 2.0 consist of the following components

• Set of driver and libraries which access and post process the processor energy counter to calculate the power usage in watts and processor frequency (default install directory will be ~\Program Files\Intel\Power Gadget 2.0 for 64-bit OS)
• EzPwrLibrary.dll is the energy library which has the power API's
• daq_driver.dll is an interface to Intel® Energy Checker, which is installed in the same directory
• PwrLogSample.exe is a console application that logs power and frequency data via Windows command (alternative if you don't use the Windows* sidebar gadget). Open command prompt as an administrator, usage: PwrLogSample.exe <duration in seconds> <log_filename.csv>
• The Windows® 7 Sidebar gadget component which is automatically installed (except for server OS). Below is a screenshot of the tool UI and settings for logging power usage.

System Requirements (Windows)

• Windows 7* 32-bit and 64-bit
• Windows* Server 2008, Windows* Server 2008 RC2 (64-bit server platforms)
• Microsoft* .Net Framework 4
• Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable package (x86 or x64 depends on OS)
• 2nd Generation Intel® Core^TM Processor, previous processors not supported
  • Single socket
  • Multi-socket

Installation/Setup

1. Download the appropriate 32 or 64-bit package and copy to your test system
2. Run setup.exe as an administrator. Accept the UAC, if one appears
3. Follow the installer prompt instructions to complete installation
- Microsoft* .Net Framework 4 (will automatically be downloaded from Microsoft* site if not yet installed in your system)
- Microsoft Visual C++ 2010 SP1 Redistributable Package (will automatically get installed if not yet installed)
- You will encounter a pop-up window warning about the gadget (please ignore)

Usages

Some usages of the Intel® Power Gadget 2.0. The Windows® 7 Sidebar gadget component installed on client OS (Windows® 7) monitor processor power usage when running a workload, or utilizing the daq_driver.dll (included when you install the tool) which is an interface to Intel® Energy Checker SDK, using the power API's in the energy library to get similar power estimation feature in an application, and many more.

Common use of Intel® Power Gadget is via Windows® 7 sidebar gadget. It is a simple and easy way to monitor energy usage of the processor:
- Provides processor power (Watts) and frequency (MHz) in real-time via graph displayed in the gadget
- Lets you log the power and frequency measurements and save it in a csv format.

Known Limitations/Issues

- Only works on 2nd Generation Intel® Core^TM processor family or later
- Use 32-bit installer only on 32-bit OS

Mac OS X* version
A version of Intel® Power Gadget 2.0 is now available for Mac OS X. The Mac version of Intel® Power Gadget 2.0 is functionally identical to the Windows version, but has some specific differences:

- The Power Gadget GUI is an application as opposed to a desktop gadget.
- It does not currently support multi-socket configurations (as there are currently no Mac systems with multiple 2nd generation Intel® Core^TM processors).
- The EzPwrLibrary API is written in Objective-C.

 Contents 
 The Intel® Power Gadget 2.0 Mac version consists of the following components:

- Intel® Power Gadget GUI application.
- Driver (PowerGadgetDriver.kext) that accesses processor MSRs to determine processor power and frequency.
- Dynamic library (EzPwrLibrary.dylib) that provides an Objective-C API for accessing processor power and frequency data form the driver.
- Terminal application (PowerLogSample) that logs power and frequency data. The terminal application serves as an example of how to use the EzPwrLibrary API, and sample source and Makefile are also included.

 System Requirements (Mac)

- Mac OS X 10.6 or later
- 2nd generation Intel® Core^TM processor or later

Installation/Setup
1. Download the Mac version of Intel® Power Gadget 2.0
2. Open "Intel® Power Gadget 2.0.dmg"
3. Run "Intel® Power Gadget.mpkg" installer
4. Follow the installer prompt instructions to complete installation. You will need to enter your password during the installation.

Usages
The Intel® Power Gadget GUI application for Mac can be launched by clicking the Intel® Power Gadget icon in Applications or Launchpad. The GUI application provides processor power (watts) and frequency (GHz) in a real-time graph; it also allows you to log the power and frequency data to csv file.

The PwrLogSample terminal application can be run by executing the following in the terminal:
$ cd "/Applications/Power Gadget/sample"
$ ./PwrLogSample <duration_in_sec> <log_path>

For information on using the EzPwrLibrary API, please see the readme.txt and the contents of /Applications/Power Gadget/sample

Download Intel® Power Gadget 2.0 now!
32-bit Intel® Power Gadget 2.0 (Windows)
64-bit Intel® Power Gadget 2.0 (Windows)

Intel® Power Gadget 2.0 for Mac

Download End User License Agreement

If you want to build it yourself, explore the guts, or even modify and redistribute - knock yourself out. All code here is licensed under the GPL. If you are looking for something that you can use in a proprietary project, see the sample source included with the whitepapers.

The Google's Desktop Sidebar Gadget integrates into the Desktop Sidebar and provides laptop users information such as battery charge and drain rates and time remaining for most laptops.

The Intel Performance Power Gadget consists of a single DLL (IntelPPW.dll) and a set of HTML and GIF files for the charge and drain rate log files. These files are installed in the "Program Files Intel Performance Power" directory. The install consists of a setup.exe and the setupippm.msi file. To gain access to the setup program, directly click on the URL below:

http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/ISN/Home/SiteImages/3/setup.exe

The setup.exe file will check for install prerequisites such as the MSVC C/C++ 8.0 runtime. If the install fails it is most likely due to the failure to install the MSVC runtime prerequisite. Install the freely redistributable MSVC runtime:

http://softwarecommunity.intel.com/ISN/Home/SiteImages/3/vcredist_x86/vcredist_x86.exe

and try running setup again.

If you have questions email me at: richard.winterton@intel.com

Here are some more articles on power management and green software:

• Extend battery life
• How to write energy efficient applications
• Energy efficent software