Platforms

Abstract

The ability to quantify power and energy use is critical to understanding how power and energy are currently being used. A measurement capability is also necessary to measure the effect of tuning or modification of platform parameters, CPU frequency, and network bandwidth for example. In later chapters, these effects will be evaluated based on energy savings versus performance impact. Simply stated, power and energy measurement first require hardware support. This chapter will outline the hardware architectures and some of the significant systems software of the platforms used in the experiments detailed in this book.