Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD)

[Elmer Phud]

Spokeshave -

The way I understand it, these products spend the vast majority of their time in "sleep" mode, waking occasionally to listen to the Base beacon to determine if there are pending data. If nothing is pending, then it goes back to sleep. If data are pending, then the device requests a send, and the time between the request and the receive is idle. In other words, idle is when the device is "awake" and listening, but not transmitting or receiving. I would expect that, of all the states, these devices spend the least amount of time in "idle".

A couple of days ago someone quoted an Intel spokesman as saying that power was saved by doing less polling, or some such thing. I don't know why they would poll at all. It should be interrupt driven.