Graphical user interface energy characterization for handheld computers

ABSTRACT

A significant fraction of the software and resource usage of a modern handheld computer is devoted to its graphical user interface (GUI). Moreover, GUIs are direct users of the display and also determine how users interact with software. Given that displays consume a significant fraction of system energy, it is very important to optimize GUIs for energy consumption. This work presents the first GUI energy characterization methodology. Energy consumption is characterized for three popular GUI platforms (Windows, X Window system, and Qt) from the hardware, software, and application perspectives. Based on this characterization, insights are offered for improving GUI platforms, and designing GUIs in an energy-efficient and aware fashion. Such a characterization also provides a firm basis for further research on GUI energy optimization.

REFERENCES

• 1: Proc. Int. Symp. Human Computer Interaction with Mobile Devices and Services , 1999--2003.
• 2: Kathleen Baynes , Chris Collins , Eric Fiterman , Brinda Ganesh , Paul Kohout , Christine Smit , Tiebing Zhang , Bruce Jacob, The performance and energy consumption of three embedded real-time operating systems, Proceedings of the 2001 international conference on Compilers, architecture, and synthesis for embedded systems, November 16-17, 2001, Atlanta, Georgia, USA [doi>10.1145/502217.502253]
• 3: Inseok Choi , Hojun Shim , Naehyuck Chang, Low-power color TFT LCD display for hand-held embedded systems, Proceedings of the 2002 international symposium on Low power electronics and design, August 12-14, 2002, Monterey, California, USA [doi>10.1145/566408.566440]
• 4: D. Chung. Mobile platform display technology advancements. Intel Developer Forum, Sept. 2002.
• 5: Todd L. Cignetti , Kirill Komarov , Carla Schlatter Ellis, Energy estimation tools for the Palm, Proceedings of the 3rd ACM international workshop on Modeling, analysis and simulation of wireless and mobile systems, p.96-103, August 20-20, 2000, Boston, Massachusetts, United States [doi>10.1145/346855.346869]
• 6: Robert P. Dick , Ganesh Lakshminarayana , Anand Raghunathan , Niraj K. Jha, Power analysis of embedded operating systems, Proceedings of the 37th conference on Design automation, p.312-315, June 05-09, 2000, Los Angeles, California, United States [doi>10.1145/337292.337427]
• 7: Keith I. Farkas , Jason Flinn , Godmar Back , Dirk Grunwald , Jennifer M. Anderson, Quantifying the energy consumption of a pocket computer and a Java virtual machine, Proceedings of the 2000 ACM SIGMETRICS international conference on Measurement and modeling of computer systems, p.252-263, June 18-21, 2000, Santa Clara, California, United States
• 8: J. Flinn, K. I. Farkas, and J. Anderson. Power and energy haracterization of the Itsy pocket computer (version 1.5). Technical Report Technical Note TN-56, Compaq Western Research Laboratory, Feb. 2000.
• 9: Franco Gatti , Andrea Acquaviva , Luca Benini , Bruno Ricco', Low Power Control Techniques For TFT LCD Displays, Proceedings of the 2002 international conference on Compilers, architecture, and synthesis for embedded systems, October 08-11, 2002, Grenoble, France [doi>10.1145/581630.581664]
• 10: GIMP toolkit. http://www.gtk.org.
• 11: GPE Palmtop environment. http://gpe.handhelds.org.
• 12: Jeff Johnson, GUI bloopers: don'ts and do's for software developers and Web designers, Morgan Kaufmann Publishers Inc., San Francisco, CA, 2000
• 13: K. Li, R. Kumpf, P. Horton, and T. E. Anderson. A quantitative analysis of disk drive power management in portable computers. In Proc. USENIX Winter, pages 279--291, 1994.
• 14: J. Lorch. A complete picture of the energy consumption of a portable computer. Master's thesis, Computer Science Dept., University of California at Berkeley, 1995.
• 15: MiBench. http://www.eecs.umich.edu/mibench/.
• 16: Brad A. Myers, User interface software tools, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.2 n.1, p.64-103, March 1995 [doi>10.1145/200968.200971]
• 17: Brad Myers , Scott E. Hudson , Randy Pausch, Past, present, and future of user interface software tools, ACM Transactions on Computer-Human Interaction (TOCHI), v.7 n.1, p.3-28, March 2000 [doi>10.1145/344949.344959]
• 18: Brad A. Myers , Mary Beth Rosson, Survey on user interface programming, Proceedings of the SIGCHI conference on Human factors in computing systems, p.195-202, May 03-07, 1992, Monterey, California, United States [doi>10.1145/142750.142789]
• 19: Opie. http://opie.handhelds.org.
• 20: Palm OS development. http://www.palmsource.com/developers/.
• 21: Philips' display driver solutions for mobile applications. http://www.semiconductors.philips.com/acrobat/literature/9397/75009652.pdf.
• 22: Qt/Embedded. http://www.trolltech.com/download/qt/embedded.html.
• 24: Amit Sinha , Anantha P. Chandrakasan, JouleTrack: a web based tool for software energy profiling, Proceedings of the 38th conference on Design automation, p.220-225, June 2001, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States [doi>10.1145/378239.378467]
• 25: Source code for benchmarks. http://www.ee.princeton.edu/~cad/benchmarks.html.
• 26: Special issue on human-computer interaction with mobile systems. ACM Trans. Computer-Human Interaction, 7(3), Sept. 2000.
• 27: T. K. Tan, A. Raghunathan, and N. K. Jha. EMSIM: An energy simulation framework for an embedded operating system. In Proc. Int. Symp. Circuits & Systems, pages 464--467, May 2002.
• 28: T. K. Tan , A. K. Raghunathan , G. Lakishminarayana , N. K. Jha, High-level software energy macro-modeling, Proceedings of the 38th conference on Design automation, p.605-610, June 2001, Las Vegas, Nevada, United States [doi>10.1145/378239.379033]
• 29: The Embedded Linux GUI/ Windowing QuicReference Guide. http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT9202043619.html
• 30: The Familiar project. http://familiar.handhelds.org.
• 31: The Skiff cluster. http://www.handhelds.org/projects/skiffuster.html.
• 32: Vivek Tiwari , Sharad Malik , Andrew Wolfe, Power analysis of embedded software: a first step towards software power minimization, IEEE Transactions on Very Large Scale Integration (VLSI) Systems, v.2 n.4, p.437-445, Dec. 1994 [doi>10.1109/92.335012]
• 33: X Window System. http://www.x.org.

INDEX TERMS

Primary Classification:
  C. Computer Systems Organization
  C.m MISCELLANEOUS

Additional Classification:
  D. Software
  D.2 SOFTWARE ENGINEERING
      D.2.2 Design Tools and Techniques
          Subjects: User interfaces

Keywords:
GUI, energy characterization, graphical user interface, handheld computers, low power, low power design