Experimental Power Supply Assessment for Usual IT Applications

Many researchers are investigating the architectural, hardware, software and system level topologies of computers, in order to reduce the energy consumption [1], [2]. An analysis of the power consumption behavior of main boards by running dedicated applications provides relevant information on how to design efficient IT-devices [3]. This contribution reports on high sampling monitoring of power supply distribution between the PC motherboard with 2Duo Core CPUs, 2660 MHz (Pmax.meas.CPU=45W) and the graphic board of type GeForce 7300SE (Pmax.meas.GPU=11W). The experiments are carried out on the same hardware structure (HP dc7800p / Windows 7P) by performing the same functions (text editing, file zipping/unzipping, audio file running and video file running) but using two different desktop applications. The authors describe both the measurement system and the procedure used for each operation step of the PC. The experimental results provide comparisons between the analyzed software applications and lead to the relevant conclusions.