Wim Coekaerts Blog

Yesterday morning I was at the Intel Developer Forum (IDF) in San Francisco. Intel announced this new community effort called lesswatts. (http://lesswatts.org) (I suggested fewerwatts but the folks involved said less sounded better...ok then

Either way - the idea behind the project is to help Linux make better use of the new power features that are in the various new chips and also provide users with the tools and information needed to set up the OS and applications in order to make more efficient use of resources. This will then result into power savings. Lower power bills, better for the planet and so forth.

Renee James, general manager of Intel's software group made the announcement in her keynote and I joined her on stage for a few minutes to explain how Oracle and Intel are working together to get this into the hands of our customers. This project is important to Oracle as a consumer of Linux and because of the Unbreakable Linux support program we provide to our customers.

This really means a few things

Oracle plans to:

- Extend the validated configurations program we have (http://www.oracle.com/features/hp/linux-validated-0606.html) and add hints and tips to set up a system with power savings in mind. This will be based on internal (Oracle) testing.

- Help with making Linux be able to use the hardware features better (kernel and userspace code changes). At the same time, Intel will spend a lot of effort on power management in Linux.

One complaint we sometimes hear, is that even though Linux has a lot of new functionality and rapidly picks up new technologies, the distributions lag. Mainline Linux testing is still not on par and backporting untested features can be difficult. We have a lot of work to do here but there also is a lot of opportunity to work together and make this happen.

Bottom line :using less/fewer watts is good for all.