Sept. 24, 2007 Intel has launched an open-source community project designed to "meet the growing demands for increased energy efficiency across the computing spectrum."

Spanning servers in data centers to personal mobile devices, the new LessWatts.org initiative brings together the community of Linux developers and end users to facilitate technology development and share information about Linux power management.

"We created LessWatts.org to accelerate technology development and simplify information sharing for effective power management across a broad spectrum of devices and industry segments that are utilizing Linux" says Renee James, corporate vice president and general manager of Intels Software and Solutions Group. "A focused initiative that aggregates the disparate efforts into a holistic system and builds on our existing efforts with the industry in the Climate Savers computing initiative will serve as a strong catalyst to get energy-efficient solutions into the market segment faster, thereby benefiting the customers who purchase Intel-based products."

The LessWatts.org initiative encompasses several projects including Linux kernel enhancements (such as the "tickless idle" feature that takes better advantage of power-saving hardware technologies), the PowerTOP tool that helps tune Linux applications to be power aware, and the Linux Battery Life Toolkit to measure the impact of Linux code changes on power savings. LessWatts.org also supports the implementation of Linux power-saving features in current and upcoming Intel platforms.