BLTK FAQ

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What is BLTK used for?

Battery life measurements for laptops require repeatable workloads. While BAPCo MobileMark* 2005 is widely used in the industry, it runs only on Microsoft Windows* platform. Intel’s Open Source Technology Center has developed a battery life measurement toolkit, to make reliable battery life measurements on Linux with no special lab equipment necessary.

In addition to measuring battery life, the infrastructure in BLTK also provides infrastructure to launch workloads and record power performance measurements. Typical workloads, emulating usage models of laptop and desktop platforms, are included.

How do I install bltk?

Refer to the README document under the doc directory, once you have untarred the BLTK tarball.

How do I check if I have bltk installed properly?

Please issue “make check” to check all the workloads, or, to check individual workloads:

  • make check-idle

  • make check-reader

  • make check-developer

  • make check-office

  • make check-player

  • make check-game

How do I run BLTK?

To start running BLTK, use the bltk command issued by the make check routine as a starting point. Use “bltk –h” to find more options.

Can I specify a limited number of times to run a workload?
Can I specify the time spent in each workload iteration?

Yes, use the “--show-num n” option to run the workload “n” number of times and “--show-time t” to run the workload for “t” sec in each iteration. Make sure you allow enough time for a workload iteration to complete. These options are useful if you are using BLTK to provide load to a system and you are measuring power externally.

Where can I find the run results?

Look in this directory: “<workload_name>.results”.

Something has gone wrong during the test run, what should I do?

Look in the “err.log” and “work_out.log” files of the result directory. They will usually contain relevant error messages.

Where can I find more information about BLTK?

Look at the paper, by BLTK author, Len Brown. It can be downloaded from: http://ftp.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/people/lenb/acpi/doc/OLS2006-bltk-paper.pdf


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