Intel has announced the launch of an open source community project designed to meet the growing demands for increased energy efficiency across the computing spectrum spanning servers in data centres to personal mobile devices.

The LessWatts.org initiative brings together the community of Linux developers, OSVs and end users to facilitate technology development, deployment and tuning and sharing of information around 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 utilising Linux," said Renee James, corporate vice president and general manager of Intel's 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 key projects including Linux kernel enhancements, the PowerTOP tool that helps tune Linux applications to be power aware and the Linux Battery Life Toolkit to measure and instrument the impact of Linux code changes on power savings. Additionally, LessWatts.org provides Linux support for hardware power saving features being implemented in current and upcoming Intel platforms.