power management experiences with joyride-1572

[Frank Ch. Eigler]

Hi -

On Fri, Jan 25, 2008 at 01:45:28AM +0100, Ivan Krstić wrote:
> >if the all brand new XO-focused software doesn't already do this

> We're building a platform [...]  Software built on our platform will
> keep improving [...]

Please don't interpret this concern as a criticism of what's been
accomplished.  It's simply an implication that the ideal state (each
and every user-space program never polling any more, right?)  is
unlikely to be reachable.


> >So you may end up needing a tool that applies heuristics and
> >overrides the CPU requests of poor programs.
>
> As an anecdote, I spend a non-trivial amount of time working in
> disconnected environments using battery power on my non-XO laptop,
> and I've been obtaining noticeable battery life gains by manually
> SIGSTOPping Firefox when not in use. [...]

That's exactly the sort of heuristic that an XO power boss tool could
apply.  A tool with such heuristics may well be easier to construct
than fixes for all of userspace.


- FChE