Setting Maximum Power Consumption Rate for Distributed Computing

[Pangloss]

Has anyone heard of a utility or programming approach that allows you to set a MAXIMUM CPU utilization or power consumption rate? I know you can set task priority or cpu/core affinity with Task Manager, but that still allows a process to use up to 100% of the CPU's time.

 

What I really want to do is run a process at a low power consumption rate, which is actually a much trickier animal. I'm not sure if the kernel will even allow this. But I know some processors have step-down modes that can be triggered programmatically, and it also occurred to me that perhaps if you can deliberately force the processor to run at less than 100% utilization then it might be effectively the same thing.

 

I'm also interested in whether any of the above can be done in Linux or MacOS or any other OS.

 

The idea is for a paper on distributed computing in which I want to address the issue of the high (and hidden) personal cost of participation, especially in light of rising energy costs. I've been tentatively starting to dig around a bit in journals but haven't come up with anything so far (though I haven't really dug in yet). Any suggestions would be appreciated.

 

(Another way to address this might be a step-and-pause approach, introducing mandatory periodic "wait states" -- this would be fairly easy to program.)

[Mr Skeptic]

I (slightly) disapprove. Many of these distributed computing projects are quite valuable, and, as I understand it, it is overall more efficient than having dedicated computers in addition to personal computers (which might be using their CPU for a regular screensaver anyhow). Consider it a donation to science.

[Cap'n Refsmmat]

Last time I used BOINC I thought it allowed you to specify a maximum CPU usage. But I'm not sure if I remember that correctly.

[Pangloss]

That's helpful. I just checked BOINC's Wiki and they do seem to have a switching scheme that lets you effectively drop the CPU utilization (e.g. set it to "50%" and it will only computer every other second). Thanks Cap'n. I can actually build on that -- perhaps an add-on BOINC module where you can plug in your local energy costs and then set a target dollar amount you want to spend each year, etc. It's just a proposal for a paper, though, I don't plan to actually write it.

[khelben1979]

Boinc has been working correctly when I have tried lowering cpu usage over here. Although, it seems that Boinc isn't perfect in this regard: my brother tried the setting on his macintosh and the value didn't correspond well with the actual cpu usage. The cpu usage dropped to a lower level, though.

 

I'm a member of 21 projects currently, myself.