Developing an environment for embedded software energy estimation

We present a complete description and evaluation of the features of a novel method for the instruction-level energy consumption measurement and the corresponding modeling approach for embedded microprocessors. According to the proposed method the base and inter-instruction energy costs of the ARM7 embedded processor as well as the energy cost due to different values in the instruction parameters are modeled. These models can be used in the estimation of the energy consumed by the processor to execute real software programs. A software tool has been developed for this estimation. The energy models derived for the instructions of ARM7 embedded processor are analyzed and the energy estimation framework is presented