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Software Defined Smart Battery Arrays Extend Laptop Life
An anonymous reader writes: A Microsoft research paper, titled 'Software Defined Batteries', outlines a radical charging alternative which uses a smart battery system to keep consumer-grade gadgets going for much longer than the current norm, by monitoring user habits. Making use of existing technologies, the engineers place multiple battery control under the duties of the operating system to create a software-defined approach optimized for different scenarios, such as word processing, email or video streaming.
The batteries are not software defined, their usage is. Get it straight. I understand that its very 21st century to make things "Software Defined", but they just aren't.
How is this different than dropping clockspeed, or dimming the screen?
Hint: not all computing activities require the same amount of power.
nothing useful or life extending about our laps, tops etc... only in india maybe was the other answer.... truth + mercy = justice
Thanks to telemetry now Microsoft can produce this kind of advancements. /s
(Overheard in the battery engineering department..)
"I just don't understand it. All of our lab tests prove the batteries last twice as long as consumers are claiming while worki...wait, they spent how long streaming Netflix video?!?!??"
Great idea, Microsoft... but please just let someone else produce the actual code??
I do NOT want some software to tell me how to use my device. I want more battery, a better battery. If I want to use all of it on silly things, so be it - I do NOT want the device to make that decision for me.
If different batteries are used for different purposes, can I remove the one that plays ads?
If you look at battery consumption the hardware has been making great strides in battery savings. But at the same time many PC makers are actually shrinking battery capacity too. Look at a Macbook Air for example, Apple has kept capacity virtually the same since inception but hardware has helped to reduce consumption by almost half. Also Intel and AMD have basically done all that can be done with chips as voltage drops, heat and resistance go down and features like Speedstep has throttled down hardware when max speed in not needed. Not sure how Microsoft can do much more on the software side? Besides possible reducing background systems by allowing those systems to not start on boot or quit when not being used. People do not realize that the PC makers are basically trying to save money by reducing battery capacity at the same time hardware is allowing for better battery life. If you look at the higher end notebook market the core i7 chips can do very well in battery life because they are efficient and the PC maker offers bigger battery capacity. Its those chip low quality entry level notebooks that give the impression battery life has not improved. No its improved tremendously as it shows in devices like the Surface. Its just PC makers are not taking advantage in the right way by keeping with good battery capacity.
place multiple battery control under the duties of the operating system
No battery for you, Linux!
Have gnu, will travel.
now imagine that business model applied to batteries. ... no, I've not read the original article.
"Your battery is 6+ months old, and therefore requires immediate replacement."
The batteries are not software defined, their usage is. Get it straight. I understand that its very 21st century to make things "Software Defined", but they just aren't.
How is this different than dropping clockspeed, or dimming the screen?
Hint: not all computing activities require the same amount of power.
It's different in that they propose multiple batteries, each optimized for different usage scenarios. The software decides which battery is active based on user activity. I would imagine this would be combined with today's standard lowering clock speed, etc.
Power management then?
So Windows 10 really does have our backs!
Always LOOKING out for the little guy! Thanks, Microsoft!
PS And Hello to the NSA!
Need I remind the membership of the decades-long clusterfsck resulting from so-called "Win-modems" whose codecs were moved from hardware into host software and to this day remain completely undocumented? Even people who put down hard cash for a WinModem driver found themselves left to twist in the wind when the 3.x kernel series came out (modems may be mostly obsolete, but FAXes aren't (yet)).
Now: Who would like to bet that the WinBattery interface will not significantly extend battery life over what we have now, remain completely undocumented (or trapped behind onerous licensing that forbids Open Source implementations), and leave Linux and *BSD users with systems with significantly shortened battery life because they can't control the power interface?
This is yet another naked attempt to bottle up critical system functionality behind a Microsoft-only wall (because apparently fscking everyone over with UEFI and (In-)Secure Boot wasn't enough).
Editor, A1-AAA AmeriCaptions
So what happens to users that don't fit the profile expected when the manufacturer builds the battery into the device. For example say a laptop manufacture configures the batteries expecting the user to mainly browse the web and work on documents. A typical business user. But what if it gets used by a graphics designer who spends most of the time in a graphics manipulation program. It's going to be less efficient for that user. Are we now going to have to specify the type of battery we need when we buy a computer, smartphone, or tablet and hope that it's main functionality doesn't change during it's lifetime?
a great software company.
Another great benefit of big brother.... longer battery life in exchange for all you computer using habits.