14 DAY TRIAL // The Less Watts program from Intel is an initiative aiming at decreasing the power consumption of Linux servers. A similar project called Green Linux Initiative was launched by the Linux Foundation this year.
The Less Watts project was made public yesterday, at the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco by Intel's corporate vice president and general manager of Software and Solutions Group.
At the Forum, he explained why the project was launched: "We created LessWatts.org to accelerate technology development and simplify information sharing for effective power management across a broad spectrum of devices and industry segments that are utilizing Linux," James told the audience. "A focused initiative that aggregates the disparate efforts into a holistic system and builds on our existing efforts with the industry in the Climate Savers Computing Initiative will serve as a strong catalyst to get energy-efficient solutions into the market segment faster, thereby benefiting the customers who purchase Intel-based products."
Less Watts will provide Linux support for hardware power saving features for Intel platforms. In the initiative, several important projects are included, the most interesting being:
￭ PowerTOP tool that's used for tuning Linux applications to be power aware. ￭ QoS power management enables aggressive power control by subsystem while honoring the QoS needs of applications and other subsystems. ￭ Linux Battery Life Toolkit, made for measuring the impact of Linux code changes on power saving. ￭ Linux kernel enhancements, that take better advantage of power saving hardware technologies.
On the LessWatts.org website one can find documentation about power management, from the basic stuff to the more advanced notions and some tips and tricks on reducing the power consumption. The advice comes from community members and Intel engineers. Also, on this site, you can download some software to help you out, and a "Results" page, to see what happens after a correct usage of Intel's power saving tips and applications.