Saving energy by means of dynamic load management in embedded multicore systems

Load balancing is widely used to optimize response times and throughput of software systems. When considering embedded systems, however, additional optimization goals like energy consumption become relevant. In this paper, we explore the use of load balancing in embedded multicore applications. We present extensions to three prominent load balancing schemes, enabling them to dynamically scale the number of active cores. We integrated the algorithms in a proprietary operating system targeting multicore embedded systems. Our evaluation, which is based on a telecommunication (VoIP) scenario, shows that a significant reduction in energy consumption is possible.