Dynamic power scheduling for VM-based multi-core systems

This study explored the issue of power consumption for multi-core systems supporting virtual technology environment and proposed a highly effective dynamic power management mechanism for a virtual machine environment, which regulates the voltage and frequency of core processors to reduce energy consumption during system operations. We analyzed the actual execution state of the threads under the system environment executed by KVM virtualization technology and implemented this power management mechanism in the Linux 2.6 operating system. The experimental results indicated that the proposed mechanism is capable of reducing system energy consumption by an average of nearly 65%, while prolonging the execution time by an average of only 3%. The results suggest that, aside from considering the execution time, this mechanism can achieve the main objective of energy saving.