Power Management

Optimize Energy • Extend Battery Life • Reduce Operational Cost

Efficient power management isn’t optional — it’s fundamental to product performance, battery life, and total cost of ownership. Whether you’re building wearables, industrial controllers, or edge servers, your software layer must actively manage hardware resources to meet energy budgets, thermal constraints, and sustainability goals.

At RISCstar, we bring deep expertise in power management for both Linux kernel and Zephyr RTOS — helping your teams optimize dynamically for real-world usage, not just lab conditions.

The Problem: Un-optimized Systems Cost More Than You Think

Many product teams face these common challenges:

Battery life falls far short of specs due to under-tuned idle and sleep states
Heat and fan/heatsink costs increase time-to-market and reliability issues
Performance mismatches: high power usage under light load or latency under heavy load
Inconsistent behaviour across silicon, firmware versions and OS kernels
Long tail of product support as new mobile/unified SKUs emerge
Missed sustainability targets and higher operational costs

In our blog “Power Management on Embedded Linux Systems” we explain how embedded Linux platforms often overlook deeper layers of power management — from device-tree tuning to idle-state clustering.

In “Power Management Embedded Linux Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling” we cover how DVFS domains are implemented incorrectly, leaving large savings on the table.

And in “Power Management on Embedded Linux Systems: Idle State Management” shows how idle-state (C-state) management that isn’t aligned with hardware leads to large cumulative losses in battery or energy cost.

Our Expertise: We Understand the Entire Power Stack

Our engineers specialise in the full stack of power management for Linux and Zephyr systems, covering:

Device-tree and topology configuration for PM domains
CPU DVFS, big.LITTLE cluster transitions
Idle-state (C-state) tuning, tick-stop, SO-stop, wake-source mapping
System power domains, regulators, clocks, memory retention and wake logic
Thermal management integration and runtime power constraints
OS power budgeting, latency trade-offs, and real-world workload modelling
Zephyr’s tickless and idle system patterns for ultra-low power embedded use
In-field power monitoring, instrumentation, profiling and long-tail behaviour

This kind of depth ensures your product is power-efficient not only in lab conditions but across varied use cases and lifecycle scenarios.

Our Approach: Methodical & Results-Driven

Initial Audit & Baseline Profiling

We begin by profiling your platform under representative workloads, measuring idle behaviour, DVFS transitions, wake-source impact, memory retention leakage and component-level consumption. We compare against expected product energy envelopes and identify hotspots

Re-tailor device-tree and driver support for power domains, clocks and regulators
Tune DVFS governors for your workload profile and sleep/pause patterns
Map and optimize idle states, ensure wake-source discipline, align OS timers and tickless behaviour Integrate thermal, battery-fuel gauge and runtime power constraints
For Zephyr: enable CPU idle states, wake-up events, and sleep-entry using low power OS features

We deploy instrumentation (RCM/DAQ, power‐mon adapters, on-board sensors) to validate energy savings, cycle count, and produce reports with pass/fail criteria tied to your product KPIs. We also align test harnesses with nightly/CI behaviour for sustained optimisation.

We help embed power-aware workflows into your board bring-up, SOC enablement, and long-term maintenance. That includes regression tracking, upstream kernel/Zephyr patch integration, power-budget dashboards and night-time telemetry where appropriate.

Proven Experience

Optimised battery life by 35% on a wearable device by realigning idle states and reducing wake-source noise
Delivered server-platform power reduction of 18% under idle and low-utilisation by tuning DVFS and C-states
Ported Zephyr low-power modes to custom SoC and enabled 10× longer sleep times in an IoT sensor network
Upstreamed power-related kernel improvements for a major SoC vendor, reducing maintenance burden and achieving earlier mainline release readiness

We are active contributors in both the Linux kernel power subsystem and the Zephyr energy domains — and our blog archives serve as published thought-leadership in this field.

Why RISCstar?

Dual-stack expertise (Linux + Zephyr) across embedded, edge and server domains
Deep hardware-aware power engineering (regulators, clocks, memory, SoC topology)
Proven approach linking product KPIs (battery life, TCO, thermal envelope) to software optimisations
Knowledge transfer built in — your team upgrades while your product reduces cost
Upstream and community ties — enabling early access and long-term sustainability

Ready to Make Power a Competitive Advantage?

Don’t let power inefficiency become your next technical debt burden.

Contact our power-management specialists today and start saving energy, time and cost for your next product launch.