Power implications of high resolution timer tick settings

Extending the battery life by reducing the power impact of software applications is becoming increasingly important in mobile computing systems. Several power estimation tools are being developed for software applications, but a gap exists in using them to instrument software applications for better power footprint. In this paper, we analyze idle and active power management scenarios of software applications and target minimizing OS-application interaction as our goal for obtaining power savings. A timer tick varying strategy is shown to reduce power consumption by 3 Watts for multimedia playback software.