A middleware framework coordinating processor/power resource management for multimedia applications

It is challenging to reduce the processor power consumption while meeting the processor resource requirement of distributed multimedia applications in portable computers. This paper presents a middleware framework coordinating the Processor/Power Resource Management (PPRM) in mobile computing environment. Our framework has four major contributions: (1) providing a power-aware resource reservation mechanism, where admission control is based on the processor utilization and power availability; (2) adjusting the speed and corresponding power consumption of the processor upon events, triggered by the change of the system workload or power availability; (3) updating reservation contracts of multimedia applications to maintain their resource requirements while adjusting the processor speed; and (4) notifying applications about the change of resource status to enable them to adapt their behavior and complete tasks before the power drains. Our experimental results show the effectiveness of the coordinating PPRM framework to save energy and maintain the resource requirements of multimedia applications.