PERFORMANCE AND ENERGY EFFICIENCY OF COMMON COMPRES- SION/DECOMPRESSION UTILITIES: AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY IN MOBILE AND WORKSTATION COMPUTER PLATFORMS by ARMEN A. DZHAGARYAN A THESIS Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering in The Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering to The School of Graduate Studies of The University of Alabama in Huntsville HUNTSVILLE, ALABAMA 2013 In presenting this thesis in partial fulfillment of the requirements for a master’s de- gree from The University of Alabama in Huntsville, I agree that the Library of this University shall make it freely available for inspection. I further agree that permis- sion for extensive copying for scholarly purposes may be granted by my advisor or, in his/her absence, by the Chair of the Department or the Dean of the School of Gradu- ate Studies. It is also understood that due recognition shall be given to me and to The University of Alabama in Huntsville in any scholarly use which may be made of any material in this thesis. (student signature) (date) ii THESIS APPROVAL FORM Submitted by Armen A. Dzhagaryan in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering in Computer Engineering and ac- cepted on behalf of the Faculty of the School of Graduate Studies by the thesis com- mittee. We, the undersigned members of the Graduate Faculty of The University of Ala- bama in Huntsville, certify that we have advised and/or supervised the candidate on the work described in this thesis. We further certify that we have reviewed the the- sis manuscript and approve it in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the de- gree of Master of Science in Engineering in Computer Engineering. Committee Chair (Date) Department Chair College Dean Graduate Dean iii ABSTRACT The School of Graduate Studies The University of Alabama in Huntsville Degree Master of Science in Engineering College/Dept. Engineering/Electrical & Computer Engineering Name of Candidate Armen A. Dzhagaryan Title Performance and Energy Efficiency of Compression/Decompression Utilities: An Experimental Study in Mobile and Workstation Computer Platforms Lossless compression and decompression are routinely used in mobile and workstation computer systems to reduce the costs of communicating and storing da- ta. This research presents the results of a measurement-based experimental evalua- tion of common compression and decompression utilities running on several plat- forms of varying hardware complexity representing current mobile and workstation systems. The evaluation involves characterization of the compression and decom- pression utilities in a multi-dimensional space encompassing the compression ratio, compression and decompression throughput, and energy efficiency. Different use scenarios and conditioning typical for modern mobile and workstation computing platforms are considered. The study observes a wide variety of energy costs associat- ed with data compression and decompression and provides practical guidelines for selecting the most energy efficient configurations for each system and use scenario considered. Abstract Approval: Committee Chair Department Chair Graduate Dean iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The work presented in this research would not be possible without the assis- tance of a number of people who need to be acknowledged. Foremost, I would like to thank my advisor, Dr. Aleksandar Milenkovic, for his initial experimental setup and for his continuous counsel and support throughout the entire time. Second, I would like to thank Mladen Milosevic who designed mPowerProfile. I relied on mPowerPro- file in this research to acquire power traces from mobile platforms. Its features and elegance saved me a lot of hours and made my journey more enjoyable. Most importantly I would like to thank my family, my mother Irina and aunt Svetlana, for their unconditional love and support. I am grateful for their encour- agement and motivation in pursuing my academic goals. v TABLE OF CONTENTS Page LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................... xi LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................ xv CHAPTER 1 INTRODUCTION ...................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Background and Motivation ........................................................................... 1 1.2 Data Compression ........................................................................................... 3 1.3 What has been done? ...................................................................................... 4 1.4 Contributions .................................................................................................. 7 1.5 Thesis Outline ................................................................................................. 7 2 BACKGROUND ......................................................................................................... 9 2.1 Lossless Compression Utilities ....................................................................... 9 2.1.1 gzip ...................................................................................................11 2.1.2 lzop ...................................................................................................11 2.1.3 bzip2 .................................................................................................12 2.1.4 xz ......................................................................................................12 2.1.5 pigz ...................................................................................................13 2.1.6 pbzip2 ...............................................................................................13 2.2 Evaluated Computer Platforms .....................................................................13 vi 2.2.1 Pandaboard ......................................................................................13 2.2.2 Raspberry Pi ....................................................................................15 2.2.3 Workstation platform ......................................................................17 2.3 Operating Systems .........................................................................................18 2.3.1 Mobile Systems ................................................................................18 2.3.2 Workstation and Server Systems ....................................................19 2.4 Power Measurement and Profiling ................................................................20 2.4.1 Mobile Systems ................................................................................20 2.4.2 Desktop, Workstation and Server Systems .....................................21 3 RELATED WORK .....................................................................................................23 3.1 Mobile Systems ..............................................................................................23 3.2 Workstations and Servers .............................................................................25 4 EXPERIMENTAL SETUP ........................................................................................27 4.1 Experimental Goals .......................................................................................27 4.2 Metrics ...........................................................................................................27 4.2.1 Compression Ratio ...........................................................................28 4.2.2 Performance .....................................................................................28 4.2.3 Energy efficiency ..............................................................................29 4.3 Datasets .........................................................................................................30 4.4 Measurement setup .......................................................................................31 4.4.1 Measurement Setup for Mobile Platforms ......................................32 vii 4.4.1.1 Energy Calculation Example .............................................35 4.4.2 Workstation......................................................................................38 4.5 Experiments ...................................................................................................39 4.5.1 Frequency Scaling ............................................................................43 4.5.2 Idle Currents ....................................................................................44 4.5.3 Commands .......................................................................................45 5 PANDABOARD RESULTS .......................................................................................47 5.1 Compression Ratio .........................................................................................47 5.2 Compression and Decompression Throughputs ............................................48 5.2.1 Local .................................................................................................48 5.2.2 Wired ................................................................................................50 5.2.3 Wireless ............................................................................................53 5.3 Energy Efficiency ...........................................................................................55