According to the usage statistics of user application from Microsoft, 60% of the time people spend on the PC is within the web browser. Google Chrome is a cross-platform web browser developed by Google based on Chromium project. According to StatCounter website stats, by January 2022, the market share of Chrome browser is over 63% across all platforms worldwide. 

Hybrid core architecture combining high performance cores and power-efficient cores became more and more popular, especially after Intel launched the Alder Lake CPU product. Performance cores are designed to provide maximum compute performance, while efficient cores are designed for maximum power efficiency. Usually OS schedulers can manage hybrid core scheduling, but they lack details of application behaviors, like critical paths. It’s difficult for OS schedulers to cover all scenarios. 

We come from the Web Optimization team, and focus on power and performance optimization for Web platforms, mainly Chromium, aiming for better user experience on IA. This article introduces our work to utilize hybrid core capability to schedule specific threads/processes’ execution in Chrome browser to efficient cores, which adopts dynamic policies to reduce power consumption on different levels based on device state. All the analysis and tests below are performed on the Chrome OS platform.

On the hybrid core platform, Chrome can schedule threads to efficient cores to save power consumption. However, putting browser threads on efficient cores all the time is impractical since lots of threads may surge and demand higher performance. So we propose a hybrid core scheduling technology in Chrome browser to apply dynamic throttles on specific non-critical threads through scheduling them to efficient cores to execute. The technology is based on Web runtime scenarios, like background/idle/ads/video, as the importance of threads would change in different scenarios. Moreover, device information, like battery/thermal status and hybrid core information, need to be exposed to Chrome. Based on them, hybrid core scheduling would apply different core allocation policies to balance power and performance. Normally we schedule low priority threads to efficient cores. But when the device is in a critical stage like running out of battery, the scheduling policy would be more aggressive to prolong device usage time. The application of scheduling policy relies on the OS support, and we can use thread priority or QoS mechanism according to the customs of the OS. On Chrome OS, currently we change thread priority and its cgroup association. Whole architecture of the proposal is shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: hybrid core scheduling in Chrome browser

On the hybrid core platform, Chrome can schedule threads to efficient cores to save power consumption. However, putting browser threads on efficient cores all the time is impractical since lots of threads may surge and demand higher performance. So we propose a hybrid core scheduling technology in Chrome browser to apply dynamic throttles on specific non-critical threads through scheduling them to efficient cores to execute. The technology is based on Web runtime scenarios, like background/idle/ads/video, as the importance of threads would change in different scenarios. Moreover, device information, like battery/thermal status and hybrid core information, need to be exposed to Chrome. Based on them, hybrid core scheduling would apply different core allocation policies to balance power and performance. Normally we schedule low priority threads to efficient cores. But when the device is in a critical stage like running out of battery, the scheduling policy would be more aggressive to prolong device usage time. The application of scheduling policy relies on the OS support, and we can use thread priority or QoS mechanism according to the customs of the OS. On Chrome OS, currently we change thread priority and its cgroup association. Whole architecture of the proposal is shown in Figure 1.

The implementation of hybrid core scheduling technology mainly contains three parts, scenario detection, scheduling policy, and OS support work.

First we need to determine the current scenario of a process based on inputs from various browser components. For example, the Chrome render process has a status about background state, which indicates whether the process is foreground or background scenario. For another example, Chrome has an Ad Tagging mechanism to detect ads and the resources they load in the browser. Ad Tagging works by matching resource requests against a filter list to determine if they’re ad requests. An iframe will be marked as an ad iframe if its url matches the filter list, if the tagged script is involved in the creation of the iframe, or if its parent frame is an ad iframe. If all frames are ad frames, the render process would be tagged as an ad process. The browser collects all these inputs and uses a prioritization mechanism to decide the overall mode for the process. Based on the scenario, we adopt an appropriate scheduling policy next.

The scheduling policy varies based on the device status. As shown in Figure 1, the browser will monitor the power status of the device via APIs provided by the OS, including the battery level, charging status and the thermal state. For hybrid core scheduling, two stages are defined below.

The first one is the normal stage, which means the battery level is over 20% or the device is charging, meanwhile the thermal state is normal. In this stage, the users care more about the performance than power consumption, so we only schedule low priority threads/processes to efficient cores, like the background processes or the threads handling low priority tasks such as logging/profiling.

The second one is the critical stage, which means the battery level is very low without charging, or the device is in critical thermal states, or the web developer explicitly wants to enter power saving mode, like using battery-savings meta tag. In this stage, we’re going to apply more aggressive policies to save more power, prolong device usage time or avoid thermal throttling due to high CPU temperature. Under this circumstance, many threads/processes in normal priority will be scheduled to efficient cores as long as they are not involved in UX critical tasks.

There is some work required to be done to make Chrome utilize OS capability. Battery and thermal status are two important factors to UX. Based on them, Chrome could make appropriate policies to balance performance and power consumption. Previously, there was only battery status exposed to Chrome. Our team has landed a thermal status notification feature in Chrome. In the feature, we introduced 4 thermal levels: Nominal, Fair, Serious, and Critical referring to Apple’s Thermal Hinting API. So that Chrome can get the real-time thermal status. With battery level, charging and thermal status reported, Chrome would decide which stage to enter and apply different scheduling policies.

Furthermore, we have built a bridge between Chrome threads and efficient cores on Chrome OS using the existing cgroup mechanism. Background priority threads are placed in a specific cgroup, which has a specified CPU set. On hybrid core platforms, efficient cores are likely to be allocated for the group. So if we want to schedule unimportant threads to efficient cores to execute, we can lower the thread priority and put them in the non-urgent cgroup. The scheduling is dynamic. When the threads become important (e.g. switch to foreground), we would raise the thread priority to normal right away, hence remove from the specific cgroup.

We use the local build Chromium browser to evaluate the power impact of hybrid core scheduling per each scenario, currently focusing on background renderer processes, ads processes, and idle processes (idle is a state defined in the Chrome RAIL model). According to the experiments performed on Alder Lake Chromebook, we observe 4.2% CPU package power reduction for web browsing when scheduling idle processes to efficient cores, and 3.8% CPU package power reduction when dispatching advertisement processes. At the same time, we use a 4-tab browsing workload to test the power impact of placing background processes on efficient cores, and see 0.9% CPU package power reduction. The power saving would be larger when the number of background tabs and page activities increase.

The experiment data shows that we achieve distinct power reduction by utilizing hybrid core capability in Chromium browser to schedule non-UX critical processes/threads to efficient cores in chosen scenarios, which helps extend device battery life.

We will continue to explore more scenarios, which don’t demand high performance, and corresponding processes/threads can be scheduled to efficient cores. Besides, as for some scenarios like ads and idle, running on efficient cores might have performance impact, we are about to conduct performance evaluation soon and adjust the scheduling policy accordingly. Furthermore, we intend to extend our analysis and hybrid core scheduling optimization to Windows and Linux platforms.

Over the past few years, smartphones have evolved a lot. Apart from making calls, smartphones are nowadays utilized for various different purposes like browsing the web, watching videos, playing games, etc. So, Android smartphones can now do almost everything that a computer does.

Do you know that you can remotely control the power on/off the menu of a computer with a smartphone? Actually, it’s possible to remotely shutdown a PC from anywhere with a smartphone. In this article, we are going to share a few best methods that would help you to remotely shutdown Windows PC from anywhere using Android smartphones.

To remotely shut down a Windows PC from anywhere using Android, we need to use a few third-party apps. Below, we have shared the three best methods to shutdown Windows computers from a smartphone.

1. Using Airytec Switch Off

Airytec Switch Off is one of the best and easiest to use Windows software to shut down, suspend, or hibernate Windows 10 system. It’s a web client that works inside the browser. Follow some of the simple steps given below to use Airytec Switch Off

Step 1. First of all, download and install the program Airytec switch off.

Step 2. Once installed, you will find a shutdown icon in the system tray.

Step 3. Click on the icon and tick the options there according to your need. Just make sure to enable the option ‘Force applications to close’

Step 4. Now right click on the shutdown icon and click on settings. Now open the ‘Remote’ tab and click on Edit Web interface Settings.

Step 5. Under the web interface settings, check the option ‘Enable Web interface’ and uncheck the ‘Enable Authentication (basic)’ option. Once done, click on the ‘Apply’ button.

Step 6. Now click on ‘view/update static addresses’ and note down the Shutdown URL. You can bookmark the webpage URL on your mobile. Now double-click on the Airytec Switch Off icon on the system tray and enable tasks.

Step 7. Now open the URL on your mobile and you will see a screen like below.

Step 8. To shut down your computer, just click on the ‘Shutdown’ option. You can also Restart, Sleep, and hibernate your PC from mobile.

That’s it! you are done. By using this, now you can easily shut down your computer from anywhere using your phone.

2. Using Unified Remote

Unified Remote is by far the best remote control app for Android available on the Google Play Store. With Unified Remote, one can easily turn their Android device into a universal remote control for PC. Once turned, it can be used to remotely shut down a computer from anywhere. Here’s how to use a unified remote.

Step 1. First of all, download  & install the app named Unified Remote on your Android device.

Step 2. Now, download & install the unified remote desktop client on your PC.

Step 3.  Now open the Android app, make sure your device and computer are connected to the same WiFi network. If you are connected you will get to see the screen like below.

Step 4.  Now on the mobile app, you will get to see lots of options like “Basic Input”, “File Manager”, “Keyboard” etc.

Step 5. Now you need to click on “Power”

Step 6. Now you will see various options like Restart, Shutdown, etc.

Simply, click on shutdown and your computer will be turned off from your mobile device. This is by far the easiest way to do so.

3. Using Shutdown Start Remote

Shutdown Start Remote is an app for Android to remote shutdown or start your computer. It is very easy to use. Users need to download a Windows client and an Android app to shut down the computer remotely.

Step 1. First of all download and install Shutdown Start Remote on your Android smartphone.

Step 2. Now in the very next step, you need to download the client for Windows. 

Step 3. Make sure you are connected to the same wifi network. Open the Android app and you will see the screen like below. Simply scroll down the screen.

Step 4. Now you need to tap on ‘Start Search’. It will detect the computer automatically.

Step 5. Once the app detects the computer it will show you the screen like below. Here you need to tap on your computer.

Step 6. Now you will see the screen like below. Here you can set the time to schedule a shutdown. Or else, you can choose to restart, shutdown, or hibernate your computer immediately.

That’s it! You are done. This is how you can use the Shutdown Start Remote to control your computer from your Android smartphone.

4. Using Shutter

The shutter is one of the great Windows tools developed by Denis Kozlov. The tool allows users to shutdown, restart, and hibernate computers through a web browser. That means you can use Shutter to remotely turn off your computer from a web browser running platforms including iOS, Android, etc.

Step 1. First of all, download the shutter on your Windows computer and install it as usual. You will now see the main interface of the tool.

Step 2. Now you need to set events that will trigger actions. For example, you can select low battery on events to trigger the ‘Shutdown’ or ‘Hibernate’

Step 3. After selecting the event, configure the actions. In ‘Action’ you need to select ‘Shutdown’. Now click on the ‘Start’ button.

Step 4. Now open the ‘Options’ and then go to the ‘Web Interface’.

Step 5. Under the web interface, you need to select your computer’s IP Address from the listed IP Menu and then choose the port that you would like to use. Enter the Username and Password and click on ‘Save’.

Step 6. Now open the web browser and then enter the IP Address with the port number. It will ask you the username and password, enter it and then choose anything from the list.

Using Shutter

That’s it, you are done! This is how you can use the shutter to remotely shut down your computer from anywhere with a smartphone.

So this is all about how to remotely shutdown a PC from anywhere with a smartphone. I hope this article helped you! Please share it with your friends also. If you have any doubts related to this, let us know in the comment box below.

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10 useful tech tips you’ll use over and over. Everybody loves a cool trick such as phone case cleaning tips, . No matter how well we know an app or program, there’s almost always some shortcut we never learned. The same goes for hardware: We may use gadgets every day without knowing their helpful quirks.

10 Useful Tech Tips You will Use Over And Over.

Here are some of my favorite popular tech tips, tricks, and shortcuts for a range of popular programs and tools:

1. Put your USB drive in the right way the first time

Plugging in a USB cable the right way feels like a no-brainer. Then why do we get it wrong on the first try so often?

Here’s the secret: Grab any USB cable sitting around your house. See that symbol on one side? It’s not just branding or decoration. That symbol will point up if you’re plugging in horizontally and if you’re plugging a cable vertically, the USB symbol will face you. Now you know.

2. Reopen a closed browser tab

It happens all the time. You have a dozen tabs open in your browser and accidentally close the wrong one. You could open up your browser’s history and reopen the tab from there, or you can do it with a couple of keystrokes.

Hit Ctrl+Shift+T on your PC or Command+Shift+T on your Mac to automatically reopen the tab you just closed.

3. Share a YouTube video at a precise point

If you see something in a YouTube video that you want to share at a particular point, you can get a link that takes people directly to that moment, you can get a link that takes people directly to that moment. Click the Share button below the video. Look for a checkbox below the link. It will automatically display the time at which you currently have the video stopped.

You can stick with this time or choose a different time. Copy the link and share it on your preferred social media or email it to a friend. When someone views the link, the YouTube video will automatically skip right to the point you chose.

4. Search using “Site:” to find content like a ninja

A Google search can return millions of results. Cut that down significantly by searching just a single site with Google’s Site: feature. Open Google in your browser and type “site:” and then the website you wish to search. Like this: “site:komando.com” but leave off the quotation marks.

Tip in a tip: You can enter “site:komando.com search term” in your browser’s address bar and no need to go to Google. Again, no quotation marks needed.

5. Report junk texts and stick it to the scammers

Junk texts are downright annoying. You can block them, but it feels good to take action, too.

Report texts to the GSMA’s Reporting Service with just a few clicks. Forward the message to 7726 (guess what that spells?) or just hit “Report junk” in your messaging app.

6. Use your voice in Google Docs

I bet you already use your phone’s speech-to-text to dictate text messages or even emails, but did you know you can do the same in Google Docs? It’s free and it works surprisingly well.

Open a new document in Google Docs, then enable Voice Typing from the Tools menu. Then start dictating. Voice Typing recognizes commands like “comma,” “period,” and “new paragraph” as well.

7. Download movies on Disney Plus

Each streaming service has a different policy for downloading video content and watching offline. Netflix was a major holdout until 2016. But Disney Plus allowed this option right away. The download icon is located at the bottom of the menu. Using the Disney Plus app, you can also download as many titles as your hard drive can hold.

8. Crop a screenshot

Screenshots are common practice, but you often capture more than you need. Revealing too much of your screen in a single image can actually threaten your security. Instead, you can take a screenshot with precise cropping, so that you include only what you want.

On a Mac, press Command + Shift + 5, and a rectangle will emerge, which you can manipulate as much as you want.

On Windows 10, go to Start, enter the Search Bar, and type Snipping Tool. This will give you a similar box that you can drag to any shape over your screen.

9. Search WhatsApp chats

Messages accumulate over time, no matter what platform you use. We want to find that one hilarious quote or a vital street address, but it’s lost in a disjointed sea. WhatsApp may be the most-downloaded app of the decade, but many users are unaware that you can search your messages, just like Google.

For iOS versions, there’s a search bar; for Android, there’s a search icon. Either way, find words unique to a specific conversation to narrow down the exact message you’re looking for.

10. Unsend an email

Did you just send out an email to everyone that was meant for one person? Well, Gmail has the ability to unsend an email by adjusting one setting prior to writing your email.

This recall of a message will also allow you to modify spelling errors, incorrect recipients, subject line and even append forgotten attachments.

Be sure to adjust the setting to a higher number than the default setting of five seconds. Let’s face it; five seconds isn’t even enough to realize you made an error, let alone hit the unsend button. Thankfully, Gmail settings provide the option of pausing an email delivery up to 30 seconds.

Bonus Tip: How to electronically sign a PDF

PDFs are already starting to replace paper documents in many offices across the country. They’re more flexible, portable and convenient to use – but not everyone knows you can sign a PDF document just like a physical one.

Nearly every PDF-reading application features some way to electronically sign documents and forms.

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Microsoft had on Tuesday, the 31^st of August 2021 intimated the public its plans to roll out Windows 11 on the 5^th of October 2021, in a free upgrade of its operating system available for hardware that works with Windows 11 pre-loaded and other eligible Window 10 personal computers.

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