Dynamic power management (DPM) is a design methodology for dynamically reconfiguring systems to provide the requested services and performance levels with a minimum number of active components or a minimum load on such components. DPM encompasses a set of techniques that achieves energy-efficient computation by selectively turning off (or reducing the performance of) system components when they are idle (or partially unexploited). In this paper, we survey several approaches to system-level dynamic power management. We first describe how systems employ power-manageable components and how the use of dynamic reconfiguration can impact the overall power consumption. We then analyze DPM implementation issues in electronic systems, and we survey recent initiatives in standardizing the hardware/software interface to enable software-controlled power management of hardware components.

This work documents the recent rise in popularity of messaging bots: chatterbot-like agents with simple, textual interfaces that allow users to access information, make use of services, or provide entertainment through online messaging platforms. Conversational interfaces have been often studied in their many facets, including natural language processing, artificial intelligence, human-computer interaction, and usability. In this work we analyze the recent trends in chatterbots and provide a survey of major messaging platforms, reviewing their support for bots and their distinguishing features. We then argue for what we call “Botplication”, a bot interface paradigm that makes use of context, history, and structured conversation elements for input and output in order to provide a conversational user experience while overcoming the limitations of text-only interfaces

Register-transfer level (RTL) power estimation is a key feature for synthesis-based design flows. The main challenge in establishing a sound RTL power estimation methodology is the construction of accurate, yet efficient, models of the power dissipation of functional macros. Such models should be automatically built, and should produce reliable average power estimates. In this paper we propose a general methodology for building and tuning RTL power models. We address both hard macros (presynthesized functional blocks)and soft macros (functional units for which only a synthesizable HDL description is provided). We exploit linear regression and its nonparametric extensions to express the dependency of power dissipation on input and output activity. Bottom-up off-line characterization of regression-based power macromodels is discussed in detail. Moreover, we introduce a low overhead on-line characterization method for enhancing the accuracy of off-line characterization.

SmartRoadSense is a crowdsensing project aimed at monitoring the conditions of the road surface. Using the sensors of a smartphone, SmartRoadSense monitors the vertical accelerations inside a vehicle traveling the road and extracts a roughness index conveying information about the road conditions. The roughness index and the smartphone GPS data are periodically sent to a central server where they are processed, associated with the specific road, and aggregated with data measured by other smartphones. This paper studies how the smartphone vertical accelerations and the roughness index are related to the vehicle speed. It is shown that the dependence can be locally approximated with a gamma (power) law. Extensive experimental results using data extracted from SmartRoadSense database confirm the gamma law relationship between the roughness index and the vehicle speed. The gamma law is then used for improving the SmartRoadSense data aggregation accounting for the effect of vehicle speed.