Energy-interference-free system and toolchain support for energy-harvesting devices

Energy-harvesting computers eschew tethered power and batteries by harvesting energy from their environment. The devices gather energy into a storage element until they have enough energy to power a computing device. Once powered, the device functions until its energy is depleted, when it browns out and gathers more energy. Software on such computing devices executes intermittently, as power is available. An intermittent program execution may be interrupted by a power failure at any point and with each interruption, the volatile state of the device (e.g., register file, RAM) is erased, and its non-volatile state (e.g., FRAM) is retained. Recent work [3] defined and characterized the intermittent execution model, in which a program´s execution spans periods of execution perforated by power failures. Our position is that designers of system and toolchain support for energy-harvesting devices should treat energy-interference-freedom and intermittence as first-class design concerns in future systems, methodologies, and techniques. From this position, we discuss the design of an energy-interference-free platform for monitoring and manipulating the energy and device state of an energy-harvesting device. We see our platform as an essential step toward a toolchain for energy-harvesting devices that supports debugging, testing, and analysis of realistic, intermittent executions.