Buffer Management for Power Reduction Using Hybrid Control

This paper proposes a method to manage data buffers for reducing the overall power consumption using the modeling tool of hybrid systems. The problem of designing the most energy-efficient switching strategy for two data buffers inserted between three components in a streamline is formulated as an optimal control problem of a hybrid system. In addition to the control, the optimal shape and size of the state space of the hybrid system also need to be designed at the same time to achieve minimal power consumption. Various necessary conditions of the solutions are presented. In some cases, the optimal switching strategies of the two buffers are derived explicitly.