A Time Slices Based Novel DVS Algorithm for Embedded Systems

With the development of semiconductor technology, more and more transistors have been integrated onto a single chip and the frequency of CPU has also been improved. When the frequency becomes higher than before, the consumed energy is also increased. Embedded systems are devices limited resource and most of them are powered by batteries. Power-consumption has been the main challenge of embedded systems. In this paper, a novel DVS algorithm based on utilization of time slices for embedded systems was proposed. A task model was established according to the characteristics of the tasks. The utilization of each task in the past time slices was calculated and recorded. And the expected utilization of each task was calculated based on the past utilization. The expected utilization was mapped to a proper frequency. And then the supply voltage of the processor would be scheduled dynamically according to the running task. When the supply voltage was adjusted downward, the power-consumption was also reduced. The experiments showed that this approach could reduce about 10% power-consumption for the tested devices.