Stories
Slash Boxes
Comments

SoylentNews is people

posted by cmn32480 on Thursday July 16 2015, @09:34AM   Printer-friendly
from the will-it-work-with-my-iphone dept.

Microsoft Research and the Georgia Institute of Technology have created WearDrive, a system that uses Bluetooth Low Energy or Wi-Fi to offload processing tasks from wearables to more powerful smartphones.

The researchers tested an Android 4.4 reference smartwatch using 512 MB of RAM and were able to obtain "up to" 8.85x better performance while stretching battery life "up to" 3.69x (i.e. 27% as much energy was used). Large, energy-intensive tasks are performed on the smartphone while small, energy-efficient tasks are performed locally using battery-backed RAM (referred to as BB-RAM throughout the paper). The WearCache system can hold data in RAM until your smartphone is in range, writing to NAND only when RAM fills up.


Original Submission

 
This discussion has been archived. No new comments can be posted.
Display Options Threshold/Breakthrough Mark All as Read Mark All as Unread
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Gravis on Thursday July 16 2015, @12:05PM

    by Gravis (4596) on Thursday July 16 2015, @12:05PM (#209890)

    ok... so my big problem with portable devices is that their displays use a fuckton (standard, not metric) of power. seriously, you have a problem when more power goes toward displaying information than actually calculating everything including what to display. what kills me is that they actually solved this problem [wikipedia.org] but wont use it! the reason of course is greed. there is very little competition in displays and it wasn't until apple pushed their high pixel density displays that anyone even tried to compete. add on the fact that it's patented and it's no surprise we have shit displays that eat batteries. this is just one of the reasons i do have a "smart" device.

    Starting Score:    1  point
    Moderation   +1  
       Interesting=1, Total=1
    Extra 'Interesting' Modifier   0  
    Karma-Bonus Modifier   +1  

    Total Score:   3  
  • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @01:41PM

    by Anonymous Coward on Thursday July 16 2015, @01:41PM (#209913)

    Have to wait till patents expire first. But with the TPP and similar, the patents on lots of stuff may never expire.

    That's how patents slow progress.

  • (Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Thursday July 16 2015, @07:47PM

    by Nerdfest (80) on Thursday July 16 2015, @07:47PM (#210133)

    ... despite the fact that many of us were *screaming* for high resolution displays for years. The next thing that I think is like this is bigger batteries. I'd love it if manufacturers gave up on the ridiculously thin phones, added a couple of millimetres of thickness and improved the battery life.

  • (Score: 2) by FatPhil on Thursday July 16 2015, @07:50PM

    by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Thursday July 16 2015, @07:50PM (#210135) Homepage
    I don't know - 5 years ago, AMOLED was causing quite a stir in the mobile world. And those can use microcurrents when not actively changing the display and in low-colour mode (pixels only on or off, no shades), which is massively more energy efficient than the portable pocket heaters that came before.
    --
    Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
    • (Score: 2) by Gravis on Thursday July 16 2015, @08:38PM

      by Gravis (4596) on Thursday July 16 2015, @08:38PM (#210160)

      yes, they have been slowly improving the displays but in comparison of power consumption Marisol displays are a quantum leap.