Graphics energy profiling system and method

• US 10,628,912 B2
• Filed: 04/23/2019
• Issued: 04/21/2020
• Est. Priority Date: 04/23/2018
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Purdue Research Foundation (The Trustees of Purdue University (d/b/a Purdue University))
• Original Assignee: Purdue Research Foundation (The Trustees of Purdue University (d/b/a Purdue University))
• Inventors: Hu, Yu Charlie, Ding, Ning
• Primary Examiner(s): Xiao, Ke
• Assistant Examiner(s): Shin, Andrew
• Application Number:
  US16/392,561
• Publication Number:
  US 20190325550A1
• Time in Patent Office: 364 Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 1/28 Supervision thereof, e.g. detecting power-supply failure by out of limits supervision
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/302 where the computing system component is a software system
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3024 where the computing system component is a central processing unit [CPU]
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3058 Monitoring arrangements for monitoring environmental properties or parameters of the computing system or of the computing system component, e.g. monitoring of power, currents, temperature, humidity, position, vibrations thermal management in cooling arrangements of a computing system G06F1/206
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 11/3062 where the monitored property is the power consumption power management in a computing system G06F1/3203
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 2201/865 Monitoring of software
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 9/451 Execution arrangements for user interfaces
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/20 Processor architectures; Processor configuration, e.g. pipelining
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2200/24 involving graphical user interfaces [GUIs]

Abstract

A method for profiling energy usage in graphics user interface (UI) update in handheld mobile devices is disclosed. The method includes mapping the pixel changes of each frame to a responsible UI update, identifying method invocations at all layers of the UI rendering stack, tracking asynchronous dependence across all layers of the UI rendering stack corresponding to each UI update by assigning a unique frame identification (ID) per frame refresh to track asynchronous dependence between UI updates and corresponding callbacks across all layers of the UI rendering stack, tracking information flow across a corresponding graphics processing unit (GPU) by using an OpenGL record-and-replay method, reconstructing the frames by replaying the OpenGL calls on the GPU during post processing, comparing frames to account for pixel changes, and tracking and attributing the energy usage during UI operations to individual UI updates.

Claims

1. A method for profiling energy usage and visual effect of a graphics user interface (UI) update in handheld mobile devices, comprising:

mapping pixel changes of each frame to a responsible UI update;

identifying method invocations at all layers of a UI rendering stack corresponding to each UI update, comprising;

tracking asynchronous dependence across all of the layers of the UI rendering stack corresponding to each UI update by assigning a unique frame identification (frame-ID) per frame refresh and a unique view identification (view-ID) to track the asynchronous dependence between the UI update and its corresponding callbacks across all of the layers of the UI rendering stack

tracking information flow across a corresponding graphics processing unit (GPU) by using an OpenGL record-and-replay method, comprising;

recording OpenGL calls along with associated view-IDs and frame-IDs but not the frames during energy profiling,

reconstructing the frames by replaying the OpenGL calls on the corresponding GPU during post processing; and

comparing the frames to account for the mapped pixel changes by each UI update, and;

tracking and accounting the energy usage during each frame rendering interval, comprising;

tracking a corresponding central processing unit (CPU) energy usage,

tracking the corresponding GPU energy usage, and

accounting the energy usage to the individual UI updates to an associated frame.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein accounting the energy usage to the individual UI updates to an associated frame comprises:

tracking and adding up the CPU energy usage by all the identified method invocations corresponding to each UI update, and

splitting the GPU energy among the UI updates based on the corresponding OpenGL call view-IDs.