Using checksum to reduce power consumption of display systems for low-motion content

Abstract

Power consumption of the display subsytem has been a relatively less explored area compared to other components of a mobile device including computing, storage, and networking units, although the former often constitutes one of the most power-hungry portions of the system. Typical applications on a mobile device such as web browsing and text editing tend to have rather static image content; each frame hardly changes from the previous one. Efficiently detecting and handling no-motion scenarios is thus critical to extend the battery life. This paper focuses on image change detection. We propose to use checksum to detect image changes. Specifically, CRC hardware is used to optimize the power consumption of 1) refresh of a local display and 2) data compression for wireless remote display. Compared with a traditional, pixel-by-pixel comparison approach, using checksum for image change detection is not only fast, but also reduces accesses to the frame buffer, resulting in significant power savings. We have built a FPGA prototype to verify that CRC can capture image changes well enough to ensure a “visually lossless” quality.