2012 Embedded Linux Conference | Presentations

Saving the Power Consumption of the Unused Memory

On embedded devices (smartphone, tablet,...), the trend is for the increase of the system memory size. DDR devices take a more and more important part in the platform power consumption. This presentation introduces a new concept which automatically adapts DDR power consumption to platform use cases. Partial Array Self-Refresh (PASR) Frameworks brings support for DDR power management feature. Connected to the different memory allocators of the system ( Buddy allocator, PMEM, ION,...), it owns the complete knowledge of used and unused memory sections (DDR bank or segment). Its role is to automatically stop the refresh of unused memory section to enhance DDR power consumption. Memory section refresh is reactivated on system request. The intention of this talk is to give an overview of this new framework and tell about the different ways to integrate it with existing memory allocators.

Loïc Pallardy

Loïc has been working in mobile phone industry since 2000. Driver developer, he has focused on Linux mobile platform since 2005, mainly on system topics like memory management, virtualization, and inter-processor communication.