嵌入式網路通訊裝置評比技術與工具之研發---子計畫二：嵌入式網路通訊裝置耗能評比基準與工具之研發

Abstract

嵌入式網路通訊裝置例如手機、PDA等具連網能力之消費電子產品對於系統之耗電相當重視，也往往是產品是否能具備市場競爭力的重要參考依據。然而在過去的研究以及開放原始碼的計畫中，針對嵌入式網路通訊裝置之耗電測試與評比工具的支援十分有限，因此使得嵌入式系統的設計發展以及研究人員需自行設計特定的系統耗電的測試除錯工具來針對其發展之嵌入式網路通訊裝置加以測試。除此之外，傳統之耗電測試工具，多半需要複雜的硬體設備，測試相當耗費時間與金錢，以軟體為主之CPU耗電評估、分析工具雖然可以降低耗電測試的成本與時間，但過去的研究與開放原始碼工具多以一般PC為主，對於完整系統之耗電分析功能有限，亦缺乏對較為先進之嵌入式網路通訊裝置（例如異質多核心系統、多重無線網路介面）的支援，因此亟需此方面的研究與開放原始碼的支援。 本計畫的主要目的在於設計與開發嵌入式網路通訊裝置之耗電評估與評比工具，不同於傳統之實體量測工具或單純CPU耗電評估工具，本計畫將發展一套嵌入式網路通訊裝置之系統耗電分析與評比工具，換言之此工具將可提供給系統發展者一個包含應用軟體耗電、作業系統耗電、CPU耗電，裝置與無線網路耗電等軟硬體耗電分析工具，以提供系統發展者除錯與瞭解系統耗電問題，同時將開發標準化測試工具、設計代表性之耗電效率參數，提供各種系統之耗電評比。本計畫預計分三年進行，第一年將透過各類型嵌入式網路通訊裝置之大量測試、分析與研究，建立抽象化之耗電模型，此模型將為耗電分析工具之核心技術，第二年將初步實現與測試此一耗電工具，同時建立耗電效能參數與標準測試項目，同時開放程式碼開放外部使用，第三年則加強工具之功能並建立評比參數與工具，並協助總計畫測試中心協助廠商使用本計畫研發成果。

Power consumption is one of the most critical issues for embedded network and communication devices such as mobile phone, PDA and networked consumer electronics. Unfortunately, previous research and open source tools lack of supports the evaluation of system-level power consumption, and system designers or developers normally require developing their own tools for evaluating their systems. Moreover, the conventional power consumption evaluation relies on physical measurements which spend time and cost. On the other hand, some pure software tools which can have fast evaluation reports but these tools can evaluate CPU power only. To develop a system-level power consumption tools for advanced embedded network and communication devices with multi-core CPU and multiple wireless interfaces is very important task. This three-year project is to develop the power consumption analyzer and power consumption benchmarking tools for embedded network and communication devices. Different from conventional physical measurements and software tools which can only evaluate CPU power, this tool provide a mean to evaluate the system level power consumption which include hardware and software. This system-level tool can provide system designers software (including OS and applications) and hardware (including CPU and peripheral) power consumption which helps designers to understand and diagnose the power consumption problem for an embedded network and communication device. In the first year, the project evaluates different types of embedded network and communication devices and constructs the power consumption abstractions for multi-core and multiple interfaces embedded system. In the second year, the project prototypes the power consumption analyzer and defines test cases and test date. We will also release our first version code to the open source community. In the third year, the projects offer the complete benchmarking tools and power consumption tools.