Computation offloading to save energy on handheld devices

We consider handheld computing devices which are connected to a server (or a powerful desktop machine) via a wireless LAN. On such devices, it is often possible to save the energy on the handheld by offloading its computation to the server. In this work, based on profiling information on computation time and data sharing at the level of procedure calls, we construct a cost graph for a given application program. We then apply a partition scheme to statically divide the program into server tasks and client tasks such that the energy consumed by the program is minimized. Experiments are performed on a suite of multimedia benchmarks. Results show considerable energy saving for several programs through offloading.