14 DAY TRIAL // Soon enough, users of Windows PCs and mobile computers will be offered access to a new application designed to allow them to measure their machine’s energy usage. Put together by Microsoft Research, a version of Joulemeter can already be downloaded via FTP, allowing early adopters to test the tool. “Joulemeter is a software based mechanism to measure the energy usage of virtual machines (VMs), servers, desktops, laptops, and even individual [pieces of] software running on a computer,” a member of Microsoft Research stated.
Joulemeter is set up to provide additional insight into just how much energy Windows computers manage to swallow, be them servers, desktops or laptops. Of course, monitoring energy consumption is a complex task, which needs to coordinate hardware and software data. The promise from Microsoft is that Joulemeter will be able to do just that.
“Joulemeter estimates the energy usage of a VM, computer, or software by measuring the hardware resources (CPU, disk, memory, screen etc) being used and converting the resource usage to actual power usage based on automatically learned realistic power models,” a Microsoft researcher stated. “Joulemeter can be used for gaining visibility into energy use and for making several power management and provisioning decisions in data centers, client computing, and software design.”
Windows customers with desktops and laptops will only be able to start leveraging Joulemeter in the coming weeks. Microsoft Research has yet to reveal a specific release deadline for the Windows energy-consumption measuring tool, but it appears that users won’t have that much to wait. The software giant underlined that Joulemeter would be provided to customers free of charge. “A freely downloadable version of the Joulemeter software that measures laptop and desktop energy usage will be available in a few weeks. Watch this space,” the Microsoft researcher added.