Energy estimation of peripheral devices in embedded systems

Abstract

This paper introduces a methodology for estimation of energy consumption in peripherals such as audio and video devices. Peripherals can be responsible for significant amount of the energy consumption in current embedded systems. We introduce a cycle-accurate energy simulator and profiler capable of simulating peripheral devices. Our energy estimation tool for peripherals can be useful for hardware and software energy optimization of multimedia applications and device drivers. The simulator and profiler use cycle-accurate energy and performance models for peripheral devices with the cycle-accurate energy and performance models for computing, storage and power devices created in previous work. We also implemented I/O communication protocols such as polling, I/O interrupts and direct memory access (DMA). Using our energy simulator and estimator, we optimized an audio driver for an MP3 (MPEG-2 Layer 3) audio decoder application. Our optimization results show 44% reduction in the total system energy consumption for the MP3 audio decoder when optimized audio driver is used.