Science & Technology (electronics)

PowerEscape has come up with a very TreeHugger formula for their work. They create data efficiency technology with the goal of achieving higher software performance and lower power consumption, and have figured out a way to have one hand wash the other. Their latest tool, Insight, aims to reduce power consumption by improving the "data efficiency" of any given C-language code as it is being written. The company says improving data efficiency in the initial stages of development yields higher performance for the same amount of power (see the graph). So what does all that really mean? In multimedia applications like digital video, audio, telecommunications and networking, according to PowerEscape, access to memory trumps computation when it comes to the consumption of processor bandwidth and system power, because it has to move data through a "complex memory hierarchy." Insight makes this much more efficient by analyzing the code and finding the bottlenecks. While all this may not mean much to anyone who isn't a software developer, we do approve of this approach, and we like the payoff: increased efficiency means decreased power consumption, which means longer battery life and lower energy bills. Whether its the microprocessors we featured yesterday or this data efficiency tool, we're happy to see an improvement in the efficiency and consumption patterns of normal things that people use every day. ::PowerScape Insight via ::Make Magazine Blog