KIISE Transactions on Computing Practices (정보과학회 컴퓨팅의 실제 논문지)

Korean Institute of Information Scientists and Engineers (한국정보과학회)
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QoS-Aware Power Management of Mobile Games with High-Load Threads

CPU 부하가 큰 쓰레드를 가진 모바일 게임에서 QoS를 고려한 전력관리 기법

  • 김민성 (서울대학교 컴퓨터공학부) ;
  • 김지홍 (서울대학교 컴퓨터공학부)
  • Received : 2016.11.14
  • Accepted : 2017.01.23
  • Published : 2017.05.15
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Abstract

Mobile game apps, which are popular in various mobile devices, tend to be power-hungry and rapidly drain the device's battery. Since a long battery lifetime is a key design requirement of mobile devices, reducing the power consumption of mobile game apps has become an important research topic. In this paper, we investigate the power consumption characteristics of popular mobile games with multiple threads, focusing on the inter-thread. From our power measurement study of popular mobile game apps, we observed that some of these apps have abnormally high-load threads that barely affect the user's gaming experience, despite the high energy consumption. In order to reduce the wasted power from these abnormal threads, we propose a novel technique that detects such abnormal threads during run time and reduces their power consumption without degrading user experience. Our experimental results on an Android smartphone show that the proposed technique can reduce the energy consumption of mobile game apps by up to 58% without any negative impact on the user's gaming experience.

모바일 플랫폼에서 게임은 가장 전력을 많이 소모하여 배터리 사용시간을 단축시키는 응용 중 하나이다. 따라서 모바일 게임은 스마트폰의 배터리 사용시간을 늘리기 위한 중요한 전력관리 대상이다. 그러나 모바일 게임 실행 중에 배터리 용량이 급격히 감소하는 현상은 빈번하게 발생하는 문제이며 사용자가 많은 여러 모바일 게임의 동작을 검토해 본 결과 멀티 쓰레드로 동작하는 동안 특정 쓰레드가 불필요하게 CPU 사용량을 높게 점유하여 에너지가 낭비되는 경우가 발생하였다. 따라서 본 논문은 게임 실행 중 Quality of Service(QoS)와 무관하게 비정상적으로 CPU 사용량이 높은 쓰레드를 검출하고 이종 멀티프로세싱 (Heterogeneous Multi-Processing)의 특성을 활용하여 QoS 저하 없이 전력소모를 감소시키는 최적화 기법을 제안한다. 제안된 기법을 상용 스마트폰(삼성 Galaxy S6 Edge)에 적용하여 QoS 저하 없이 최대 58%의 에너지 효율 향상이 가능하였다.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

Supported by : 한국연구재단

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