SmartCap: user experience-oriented power adaptation for smartphone's application processor

Abstract

Power efficiency is increasingly critical to battery-powered smartphones. Given the using experience is most valued by the user, we propose that the power optimization should directly respect the user experience. We conduct a statistical sample survey and study the correlation among the user experience, the system runtime activities, and the minimal required frequency of an application processor. This study motivates an intelligent self-adaptive scheme, SmartCap, which automatically identifies the most power-efficient state of the application processor according to system activities. Compared to prior Linux power adaptation schemes, SmartCap can help save power from 11% to 84%, depending on applications, with little decline in user experience.