Dynamic power management schemes (also called policies) can be used to control the power consumption levels of electronic systems, by setting their components in different states, each characterized by a performance level and a power consumption. In this paper, we describe power-managed systems using a finite-state, stochastic model. Furthermore, we show that the fundamental problem of finding an optimal policy which maximizes the average performance level of a system, subject to a constraint on the power consumption, can be formulated as a stochastic optimization problem called policy optimization. Policy optimization can be solved exactly in polynomial time (in the number of states of the model). We implemented a policy optimization tool and tested the quality of the optimal policies on a realistic case study.
Giuseppe A. Paleologo, Luca Benini, Alessandro Bog