Research project limits computer power consumption

The Energy Conscious Scheduling algorithm (ECS) has been patented by Young Choon Lee and Albert Zomaya at the university's Centre for Distributed and High Performance Computing.

Lee and Zomaya are now developing an ECS prototype, with a view to commercialising the research by late 2010.

Zomaya said the ECS software will be a suite of algorithms (written in C and C++) acting as 'middleware' that can see the operating system and hardware and then decide what to do with different tasks.

"In doing so it makes sure whatever decisions are made are energy-conscious," he said, adding the software stack still "gives you what you want".

"The hope is that you don't have to alter your hardware, but use a middleware layer that is portable. We want it to be as seamless as possible and it could eventually be integrated with the operating system."