Climate Savers Computing Power Management System Design Guide

By Pat Tiernan, Executive Director
Climate Savers Computing Initiative

Climate Savers Computing is built on the commitment and collaboration of industry leaders to further energy-efficient computing. Following that premise, this week we released the CSCI Power Management Systems Design Guide developed by our Power Management Workgroup. The new guide addresses general design principles for making power management faster and more reliable.

Climate Savers Computing Power Management Workgroup members that collaborated to create the computer power management standards design guide include Dell, Fujitsu, HP, Intel, LSI, Lenovo and Microsoft. The purpose of the document is to call attention to specific reliability challenges of sleep state standby (S3) technology and offer instructions on how to build energy-efficient, power-managed client platforms that will result in a positive user experience.

The Power Management Systems Design Guide identifies and removes obstacles to the adoption of power management in the desktop and notebook computer marketplace. Technical barriers addressed in the document include networking protocol and hardware and software latencies that adhere to the forthcoming Ecma Network Proxy Standard.

The design guidelines are recommended by Climate Savers Computing to make power management faster by improving a computer’s Sleep reliability and reducing latencies during Sleep and Resume cycles. Specific areas addressed in the Power Management Systems Design Guide include:

• S3 User Experience, Wake Mode and Latency


• System Recommendations for S3 Reliability


• Windows Logo Program Overview


• Network Proxy Ecma TC38-TG4 Standard (formerly TC32-TG21)
  


• ENERGY STAR v5.0


• General Design Principles for S3 Associated Hardware


• System Manufacturer Recommendations


• Implementing Power Management for USB Devices


• Reliability Testing and Tools for S3

Power management is one, and arguably the most promising, of the available PC energy conservation strategies. The Power Management Systems Design Guide, created by the industry’s leaders, is an exciting step toward significantly reducing computing energy consumption, thereby reducing a company’s IT costs and reducing its carbon footprint.